Introduction #
The Central Asian Expedition (CAE) — caemap.com/en — is an excellent resource providing detailed mapping information about Nicholas Roerich’s five-year expedition described in Trails to Inmost Asia. The website is available in both English and Russian.
Data from the website is described in a separate note.
The reconstruction of the route, organization of the material and overall design is of exceptionally high quality. Level of the implementation is very high compared other historical web projects.
However, strikingly there is a complete absence of any references to its developers or authors on the About page or anywhere on the website. The Acknowledgements are very brief:
With heartfelt thanks to everyone whose work, care, and dedication brought this project to life and kept it growing.
Being a GIS developer AND route reconstructor myself the situation is very personal and I decided to register some of the events for future reference.
The Scandal #
I deliberately won’t mention any names here. For names consult the links below.
The conflict surrounding the CAE Map project began when one of the team members (The Programmer), responsible for the technical implementation, moved the website from caemap.online (registered at 2024-03-09, whois) to another domain caemap.com (registered at 26.11.2024, whois) without consulting the supposedly primary Content Author. As a result, part of the team lost access to the site, prompting a public dispute.
The reasons for this move is in depth discussed in a rebuttal comment by user Я.И.Ф. Briefly they are:
- Disagreement with the Content Author direction: the Programmer contribution (particularly the technical implementation) justified independent control of the site. He may not have shared Content Author’s vision or approach to managing the project and its content.
- Desire for stability and control: the Programmer was “saving” the project or taking control to prevent what he saw as ineffective leadership or internal fragmentation.
- Lack of formal agreements: Since the project was developed on a volunteer basis without legal contracts regarding content or code ownership, the Programmer may have felt entitled to manage the technical infrastructure independently.
- Different views on openness and authorship: the Programmer and his supporters did not recognize Content Author’s exclusive authorship. They viewed the project as a collective effort that should not be controlled by a single individual.
The story behind its development with comments and rebuttals is uncovered here:
Conclusion #
Have a written agreement with clear responsibility/contibution separation statement before starting work.