Mozilla has announced a decision to close the MLS (Mozilla Location Service) project, which since 2013 has been developing a public service for determining geographic location based on information about known Wi-Fi access points (binding to BSSID/MAC), base stations of mobile operators (binding to Cell-ID) and IP addresses issued to the subscriber (GeoIP). The service made it possible to determine the approximate location on the map without the use of satellite navigation systems such as GPS and GLONASS.
Since 2019, the service's capabilities have been limited due to allegations of patent infringement by Skyhook Holdings and the conclusion of an out-of-court agreement, according to which Mozilla set a limit of 100 thousand API calls per day for commercial projects. The introduced restrictions led to the refusal of the Sailfish project to use MLS and the loss of investment attractiveness of MLS in the eyes of Mozilla. At the same time, MLS continued to be used in the microG project and in many alternative Android firmwares instead of the proprietary Google Network Location service.
The continued downward trend in MLS location accuracy coupled with a lack of desire to increase investment or revive the MozStumbler program has been cited as the reason for the project's demise. The database with coordinates linked to base stations and Wi-Fi networks was replenished thanks to the actions of enthusiasts who installed the MozStumbler mobile application on their smartphones.
The MozStumbler application was tied to the stumbler service, which was part of the old Firefox for Android up to version 69, which was replaced in 2020 by a new mobile edition of the browser, developed under the code name Fenix. At the beginning of 2021, the development of MozStumbler was stopped and the application was never adapted for Android 10 and newer versions of the platform. Currently, the flow of new data into the MLS database has almost stopped and the relevance of the information leaves much to be desired.
The following plan for gradually disabling the service is proposed:
- Starting March 13, the issuance of new API access keys has stopped.
- On March 27, the acceptance of POST data requests via the API will be stopped, and the publication of new database dumps for export to other systems will also be stopped.
- On April 10, all previously published database dumps will be deleted and will no longer be available for download.
- On June 12, all API access keys will be removed, except for keys used in Mozilla projects.
- On July 31, the repository with the platform code will be transferred to GitHub in archive mode. For those who wish to revive the service and maintain it on their own, the source code of the Mozilla Ichnaea platform, which underlies the MLS, will remain available under the Apache License 2.0.
Source: opennet.ru