Notes from a Maintainer - Ramya Ragupathy, HOTOSM and MapLibre

Growing up, I was always driven by a desire to learn, figure things out, and build things that matter. For a long time, that drive had a very specific destination in my mind. Like many who want to create systemic, wide-reaching change in India, being an IAS officer was my dream.

But when I graduated in 2008 with a degree in Information Systems, the immediate trajectory took me straight into the proprietary corporate tech machine.

My first role involved working on build and release systems for closed-source software. It was a fantastic engineering foundation, but it left me with a lingering question that tied right back to my original dream: How can I use this immense power of software for the public good?

By 2012, that question became too loud to ignore. I took a leap into the unknown, left the corporate world, and supported myself through freelance translation just to give myself the space to explore. That was when I discovered the world of open-source tools and community-driven ecosystems like Wikipedia, Wikimaps, and OpenStreetMap (OSM).

Seeing how everyday citizens, armed with open tools and data, could actively shape disaster response, infrastructure, and urban planning changed everything for me. I realized that public service didn't have to look like a traditional bureaucratic career. FOSS isn’t just a development methodology rather it is a vehicle for public equity at a massive scale.

Geospatial world

In 2015, as mobile internet exploded across India and location intelligence startups began cropping up, I stepped full-time into the geospatial sector. I tried everything in the geospatial domain from data generation to data engineering, community training, and field operations. I learned about the geospatial world from the ground up.

When the company I was working for closed its India operations, I was offered a relocation to the US. It was a tempting corporate safety net, but I chose to decline it to stay close to my family. That choice redirected my career in the best way possible. In 2018, I joined the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOTOSM) as a remote backend consultant.

Scaling FOSS Products

Over the years, my role evolved from writing code to shaping global product strategy. Today, I primarily serve as a Product Manager at HOTOSM, owning the roadmap for tools that operate at scale:

Managing these platforms comes with a unique, exciting constraint: we have no in-house engineering team, which means my day-to-day involves managing the full vendor lifecycle from procurement and contracting to coordinating external contributor teams across multiple time zones.

In parallel, I get to operate as the Operations and Product Lead for MapLibre, an open-source nonprofit providing cutting-edge mapping libraries. Here, I manage and coordinate with a global governing board, handle sponsor relations, and guide community engagement.

My core philosophy

What I love most about this work is how it bridges the gap between high-level technology and raw, human reality. My job has taken me to places across the world to conduct pilot training and drone mobilization.

Interestingly, my professional work has bled into my personal downtime. I’ve become an avid drone flyer. There is something profoundly beautiful about switching between a bird’s-eye view of a terrain and the close-up, human reality on the ground.

In many ways, my core philosophy on technology stems from the Brazilian film City of God. The movie details the realities of an informal settlement in Rio de Janeiro, but its soul lies in the character of Rocket, a young boy who escapes that cycle of violence entirely through the power of a camera lens. That film has always stayed with me because it serves as the ultimate proof of my deepest conviction that access to tools and information changes the trajectory of lives.

What’s Next?

My FOSS journey has been anything but linear. It required intentional pauses, turning down traditional corporate safety nets, and learning how to lead with empathy across diverse cultures.

As I look to the future, my ultimate goal is to evolve this experience into a sustainable, mission-driven organization that champions civic tech and open digital infrastructure on a global scale.

The childhood dream of public service never left me, it just evolved. By being in FOSS, I get to serve communities not just locally, but globally.

Story and insights by Ramya Ragupathy; copy editing and language refinement assisted by Gemini.