Can you give an example of a custom map server and it's usefulness?
CoMaps
Cooperative community open-source fork of Organic Maps, an offline privacy-respecting not-for-profit OpenStreetMap GPS app for your phone.
One major motivation is the sharing of maps files in areas with bad internet connection. The custom map server allows one person to download the map and share it locally with others.
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you
North Koreans: thanks mate.
If it can help their population, I am happy for it.
Their government has always had the resources to quickly change a hardcoded link in CoMaps source code and recompile the app, if they wanted to. So yeah.
Decentralization. If the official servers stop running, someone else can quickly put up a new one and everyone can switch without having to install a fork of the app with a different server address baked into it.
That's a great point
It also reduces sever load on the project.
I presume this would be useful for using mirrors