Brandon Liu on Protomaps

Brandon Liu on Protomaps

From Software Sessions by Jeremy Jung

April 6, 2025 · 60 min

About this episode

Brandon Liu discusses the Protomaps basemap project and the importance of static maps for developers.

Brandon Liu is an open source developer and creator of the Protomaps basemap project. We talk about how static maps help developers build sites that last, the PMTiles file format, the role of OpenStreetMap, and his experience funding and running an open source project full time. Protomaps Protomaps PMTiles (File format used by Protomaps) Self-hosted slippy maps, for novices (like me) Why Deploy Protomaps on a CDN User examples Flickr Pinball Map Toilet Map Related projects OpenStreetMap (Dataset protomaps is based on) Mapzen (Former company that released details on what to display based on zoom levels) Mapbox GL JS (Mapbox developed source available map rendering library) MapLibre GL JS (Open source fork of Mapbox GL JS) Other links HTTP range requests (MDN) Hilbert curve Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub . Intro [00:00:00] Jeremy: I'm talking to Brandon Liu. He's the creator of Protomaps, which is a way to easily create and host your own maps. Let's get into it. [00:00:09] Brandon: Hey, so thanks for having me on the podcast. So I'm Brandon. I work on an open source project called Protomaps. What it really is, is if you're a front end developer and you ever…

People in this episode

Host: Jeremy

Guest: Brandon Liu

Topics covered

  • Protomaps
  • open source development
  • static maps
  • PMTiles
  • OpenStreetMap

Keywords

  • basemap
  • file format
  • funding open source
  • running open source project

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Protomaps, PMTiles, OpenStreetMap, Mapbox GL JS, MapLibre GL JS, Google Maps, Toilet Map, Pinball Map

Places: UK, Seattle, Capitol Hill

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