Really excellently thought out answers/opinions, Toby. As good a statement about what MLS is really about when it comes to the practicalities of building a location "platform" for the Web, as we figure out what that means in reality And yes Combain is as could a first partner as we could wish for. . On Mar 13, 2015 4:29 PM, "Toby Elliott" <[email protected]> wrote:
> These are all reasonable questions and things we wrestle with. Here's some > of my perspective. Others in the team are welcome to chime in with > additional thoughts. > > On Mar 13, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Gervase Markham <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 06/03/15 12:56, Hanno Schlichting wrote: > >> We've finally been able to announce our new partnership with Combain > AS, head over to our blog post: > >> > >> > https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2015/03/06/combain-deal-helps-expand-mozilla-location-service/ > > > > A commenter on that blog post asked the following question: > > > > "I think the community deserves to know more details about this data > > exchange. Is Mozilla's proprietary Wi-Fi database now the IP of Combain? > > Our current database will not be going over to Combain. They will be > receiving new readings that we acquire. I don't think IP is the correct > term to use here - it implies it is now somehow exclusively theirs and they > can keep others from it. They merely have a copy of data we send to them. > > > > Are stumbler contributions now being used for that company's profit? > > Indirectly, yes. Ultimately, that's the goal of this project - to make the > map itself just a fundamental piece of data, not "owned". We believe that > this will help encourage an array of companies to sprout up to provide > superior offerings and greater choice in the geolocation space from what is > available today. > > Of course, to get there, we have a long way to go, both in terms of > filling in the map and working out the various privacy issues. Combain > helps with both of these goals, as well as helping us with improved lookups. > > > Since the Wi-Fi database was deemed too private to release to the > > public, unlike like the cell ID database, what precautions are being > > taken when sharing it with Combain? > > Combain is, in many ways, the ideal initial partner. They are interested > in the data to improve their overall positioning map, and are using it in > ways that are relatively innocuous. The problem with the raw data is that > it does have sharing concerns that are still to be worked out, and Combain > is already used to these from maintaining their own raw-data database. > They'll handle our data as carefully as they handle their own. > > > For those who trust Mozilla, what grounds are there for extending that > trust to Combain? > > You shouldn't, inherently. We have pretty good radar for how companies > that want to use the data plan to do so, and Combain "feels" pretty good to > us, but there's nothing contractual enforcing that. Their interests (which > can be seen on their website) are definitely in providing accurate > positioning, rather than using the data in less appealing ways, but > ultimately location services are sold - via api - to third parties, and > it's not reasonable for us to be dictating what those third parties can or > cannot do. > > In the event that Combain fails to live up to our expectations (general, > not contractual), we have the option to terminate the contract any time. > > > > What data from > > Combain, if any, will ever find its way into the public domain?” > > So I have to be a little handwavy here, because we're talking about a > special plan for Combain data. Let's talk about the generic case first. > > Our general contract places no requirements on the data. It'll go into the > main corpus and, as we figure out how to share that, can be shared. Other > contracts may have restrictions on what we can do with the data; those > contracts are obviously less important to us, but if they can help improve > MLS, we'll still consider them. > > The Combain contract is a general one. However, we've been wrestling with > how to measure the quality of MLS, and one of the things we're thinking of > doing is moving the Combain data into its own dataset and using it for > testing. Our own stumbler data isn't good for that - it's biased towards > data that we already have - so this data represents a unique opportunity. > So the answer to this direct question is "no, not for now", but not for the > reasons that people might think. Ultimately, it should one day be included. > > Hopefully these are useful answers. Eventually, we'd like to share as much > as we possibly can, and we're happy to talk to others who want to use the > data to see if we can find a reasonable way to make it happen, but there's > a lot to be solved before we get all the way there. > > Toby > > _______________________________________________ > dev-geolocation mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation > _______________________________________________ dev-geolocation mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
