Geoclue 2.5 & repeating call for help

Just wanted to announce release 2.5.0 of Geoclue that includes the changes I mentioned in my last blog post.

Also, while I'm at it, I wanted to highlight the "call for help" at the end of that post by repeating it here again. I apologize of repeating to those who already read it but a friend pointed out that it's likely going to be missed by many folks:

The future of Mozilla Location Service

When Mozilla announced their location service in late 2013, Geoclue became one of its first users as it was our only hope for a reliable WiFi-geolocation source. We couldn't use Google's service as their ToC don't allow it to be used in an open source project (I recall some clause that it can only be used with Google Maps and not any other Map software). Mozilla Location Service (MLS) was a huge success in terms of people contributing WiFi data to it. I've been to quite a few places around Europe and North America in the last few years and I haven't been to any location, that is not already covered by MLS.

Mozilla's own interest in this service was tied to their Firefox OS project. Unfortunately Firefox OS project was abandoned two years ago and Mozilla lost its interest in MLS as a result. Mozilla folks are the good guys so they have kept the service running and users can still contribute data but it's no longer developed or maintained.

Since this is a very important service for all users of geoclue, I feel very uneasy about this uncertain future of MLS. So consider this a call for help. If your company relies on MLS (directly or through Geoclue) and you'd want to secure the future of Open Source geolocation, please do get in touch and we can discuss how we could possibly achieve that.

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