Free and Open Source Software

17937 readers

136 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

beaconDB is an open, and privacy-friendly network location service, replacing Mozilla's defunct location service (beacondb.net)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/foss@beehaw.org

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

beaconDB is a drop-in replacement for MLS, which uses the same format request that's used by Mozilla's Ichnaea.

The source code is available on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/beacondb/beacondb

You can contribute to the project by using an app like NeoStumbler (GitHub) or Tower Collector (GitHub) to submit location reports. NeoStumbler does Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GSM, while Tower Collector can only do GSM cell towers. Both are FOSS and available on F-Droid.

It is also recommended by the GrapheneOS project: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112759509558471713

https://grapheneos.org/articles/positon-location-service

Just keep in mind that it's still in relatively early development, which is why it really needs contributions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fwygon@beehaw.org 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

No.

It is hard to have both; but not impossible. You can still be privacy friendly without sacrificing necessary functionality.

It will require that the "provider" of such a dataset constantly scrub, sanitize and remove data that would cause privacy hazards as quickly as reasonably possible however. That in and of itself is a technical challenge; though not impossible.

[–] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 1 points 4 months ago

I disagree that location is necessary functionality.