Birk Skyum

Co-founder of MapLibre and Member of the Governing Board

LinkedIn · GitHub · Slack

My name is Birk Skyum, and I’m a co-founder of MapLibre. It’s a privilege to work with so many passionate and talented contributors, and I’m grateful for the progress we’ve made together as a community. I’m truly honored to serve yet another term on the governing board and help keep our open stack, and our shared vision, moving forward.

My approach is simple: focus on what brings the most long-term strategic value to MapLibre and its users. Here’s a snapshot of some things I’ve worked on this past year.

My Contributions This Year

Feature development:

• Globe support – Added projection expression syntax to the style spec for adaptive projection transitions (PR)
• Globe support – Enabled terrain features for globe mode in MapLibre GL JS (PR)

Maintenance tasks:

• GL JS Testing and Coverage – Modernized tests by moving from Jest to Vitest (PR). This is a stepping stone toward adopting Rolldown, which will make our GL JS toolchain much faster.
• WIP – MapLibre Native Qt SDK – Adding Vulkan, Metal, and OpenGL 3+ support (PR). This upgrade is key for expanding our reach among automotive OEMs and Qt developers.

Community contributions:

• Made with MapLibre – I started this showcase to highlight great projects and help boost MapLibre adoption.
• Growing MapLibre in Python – I led the migration to MapLibre GL JS as the default for plotly.js v3 (writeup). With plotly.py v6 (released Jan 28), MapLibre is now poised to become a go-to for Python mapping (plotly.py has 500k-1m daily downloads), which is bringing new people into our community.
• Cross-Platform SDKs – Cross-platform SDKs continue to be a popular choice among mobile developers trends. This year, I’ve worked to support onboarding and facilitate maintenance for all four of our MapLibre Native cross-platform SDKs—React Native, Compose, Flutter, and Qt, so we can offer users a strong and unified experience.
• TSC Meetings – I regularly attend our Native and GL JS meetings to stay in sync and always be available for feedback or support.

My Vision and Priorities for the Board

My goal is simple: make MapLibre the highest-quality, most widely adopted map rendering stack in the world. I’m excited about what’s ahead and want to help keep our momentum going:

• Push GL JS forward with Luma.gl for WebGL2 and WebGPU support

• Help Native strengthen Vulkan/Metal support and remove blockers for broader industry adoption

• Move forward an additional WebGPU backed on Native, aimed at the web target, for long-term strategic reasons.

• Explore new Native features (like Globe or Terrain) to close the gap with GL JS

• Improve support for AR/VR and 3D engines

• Improve support for in-car navigation (e.g. upgrade Qt SDK, C FFI)

• See the MapLibre Tile format adopted in real-world cases

• Support Martin in delivering server-rendering with MapLibre Native

• Experiment with AI tools for repetitive or time-consuming tasks to boost productivity

Making MapLibre Portable: Cross-Platform Ambitions

To help us stay ahead of the curve, I plan to keep experimenting with emerging tech and share what I learn with the board:

MapLibre Native in the Browser – Last year, we got Native running in the browser with WebAssembly (demo). There’s lots of room to improve performance and build paths, so my next focus is a WebGL2 build for the drawables renderer, right after the Qt SDK refactor lands. I think we can have WebGL2 ready before year’s end, and then WebGPU is up next.

MapLibre GL JS Beyond the Browser – Once GL JS is fully migrated to luma.gl, I’d like to explore its potential outside the browser, such as for server rendering or desktop/mobile apps.

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