Mozilla Drops Axe on its Privacy-Friendly Location Service - OMG! Ubuntu
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Mozilla has announced it is ending access to Mozilla Location Service (MLS), which provides accurate, privacy-respecting, and crowdsourced geolocation
    • lemmyvoreEnglish
      10•1 year ago

      The entire post is a very good read because it goes over all the aspects of such an undertaking. And it doesn’t look like something easy to do.

  • @[email protected]
    21•1 year ago

    This should be pretty much impossible to replace short-term without resorting to Google. Building a database that maps routers, cell towers and more to coordinates from scratch takes a lot of time I imagine.

    • m-p{3}
      17•1 year ago

      Not sure if that is the kind of stuff that could be merged with OpenStreetMap’s dataset.

        • m-p{3}
          2•1 year ago

          I’m sure it can be done technically, not sure if that would fall within the OSM mission though.

    • @[email protected]English
      13•1 year ago

      I would say that it’s not hard to replace. I mean, all you need is an app that regularly dumps GPS data and a list of signal strengths from radios that broadcast unique IDs to start building out a database.

      What’s hard is doing one that is as complete and accurate as Google’s, because Google is hoovering up data from most cell phones about the location of a lot of devices.

      • @[email protected]
        13•1 year ago

        You are glossing over a lot of infrastructure and development, when boiled down to the basics you are right. So it is basically a question of getting enough users to have that app installed. Which is not impossible given that we do have initiatives like OpenStreetMap.

  • The Baldness
    75•1 year ago

    This sucks big time. Many users of custom mobile phone ROMs are concerned with privacy, and use Mozilla Location Services as an alternative to Google. Not sure what other options are available right now.

    Edit: The more I’m reading about this, the more absolutely fucked up it is. There really are no viable alternatives. Mozilla is going to just take all its collected data offline, and that’s that. Given that they accept monetary donations from the public, they should make the information public for download even if they don’t want to host the service anymore. Unbelievable.

  • Snarwin
    3•1 year ago

    Patent infringement claims in 2019 saw Mozilla reach a settlement to avoid litigation. As part of that settlement it was forced to make changes to MLS that impacted its ability to invest in (commercially exploit?) and improve the service.

    Yet another nice thing ruined by IP trolls. It’s long past time we threw software patents into the dustbin of history where they belong.