Potlatch 1 was released mid 2006 and was the default editor on the main OpenStreetMap site until it was replaced by Potlatch 2 in April 2011. The name Potlatch came from the name of newsletter of the Lettrist International art collective.[3]
Tim Berners-Lee demonstrated editing OpenStreetMap using Potlatch during his TED The next web talk in 2009.[4]
An alpha version of Potlatch 2, a complete reimplementation of the software, was published in summer 2010.[5] In April 2011, Potlatch 2 was released for general use.[6][7] After Microsoft had granted OpenStreetMap permission to use aerial imagery from their Bing Maps service for tracing, Potlatch 2 was extended to display these images in the background.
iD began as a reimplementation of Potlatch 2 architecture in JavaScript.[3][8][9] It replaced Potlatch 2 as the default editor on the OpenStreetMap-Website in 2013.[10]
In 2020, the OpenStreetMap Foundation provided €2,500 funding for Potlatch to be ported to Adobe AIR, so that it could continue to run as a desktop application for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh after Flash was disabled in web browsers. The desktop version was subsequently released as Potlatch 3.[11]
