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Use of MozStumbler map tiles in third party stumbling apps
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Adrian Custer
Aug 4, 2014, 10:30:35 AM8/4/14
to list, Moz-Dev-Geolocation
Hey all,
Mozilla may be able to help the development of stumbling applications
since Mozilla already has access to map tiles. This mail is a request
for guidance on the re-use of the tiles currently provided as part of
the MozStumbler Android app.
In summary, my questions are:
0) why does MozStumbler not include any copyright notice on its tiles?
1) can the tiles used by the MozStumbler mapping panel be reused?
2) can the tile service used by MozStumbler be reused by third party
stumbler applications?
Stumbling works better with a map, both to stumble one's way forward
productively and to stumble one's way home.
The quickest way to provide a map for the context is using a
tessellation of image 'tiles' showing a map and overlaying positions on
such a background. The 'web' has standardized on a particular set of
tiles (invented by the Google Maps project) so most mapping libraries
can handle such tiles. However, applications wanting a tile map still
need to
1) have the right to show such tiles
2) have the right to distribute such tiles, and
3) have some way to provide such tiles to users.
Solving the issue of providing tiles to stumbling apps is a first step;
eventually, I suspect we will want a general solution to providing map
tiles on the platforms where Mozilla and its community are active, most
notably for me on Firefox OS; this mail is about stumbling apps but the
answers to some of these questions may influence the larger question.
The first of these issues, having the right to show such tiles boils
down to having the right to use some source of geographic data and
having some way to generate tiles from that data. Generally, in the free
software world we use the OpenStreetMap (OSM) data set and some free
software to make the tiles. The use of OSM data carries with it the
requirement to label the map '(c) OpenStreeMap contributors'.
0) why does MozStumbler not include any copyright notice on its tiles?
The MozStumbler app has a mapping panel. The background map is built
from tiles obtained from an online web service, a service which is
apparently under some commercial contract. However, the map does not
show any copyright notice.
Is the lack of a copyright notice because this is not needed according
to the commercial contract because the original producer has full rights
to the underlying data? (Alternatively, this lack of copyright notice
might simply be due to an oversight or to work being in progress on the
MozStumbling app.) I am not clear if the data used for the tiles are at
all derivative of OSM data.
The second two questions are trying to see if the existing tile service
can provide any help in getting tiles to stumblin' users. There are two
approaches to this: a download bundle or a live service. If the tiles
can be reused, I could provide them as a static resource of my web app
for users. If the tile *service* can be used, then users could get the
tiles directly from the network (possibly caching the tiles temporarily
or permanently locally).
1) can the tiles used by the MozStumbler mapping panel be reused?
Given that Mozilla is paying for the provision of map tiles this
aggreement might cover both the right to access and use the tiles and
the service providing the tiles when requested by the MozStumbler
applications; alternatively, Mozilla might only be paying for the
service, with the tiles and underlying data being available for free.
If the tiles were free for reuse, we would be able to reuse them in any
of several ways. For offline access, tiles could be provided a static
files in the app. The size impact is managable for any zone where re-use
will be intensive; storing a set of tiles from a z level of 10 to a z
level of 14 covering 1600 km^2 (40kmx40km) requires only about 6 MB.
2) can the tile service used by MozStumbler be reused by third party
stumbler applications?
This is probably not allowed by the terms of the contract or because
Mozilla is worried about the cost.
However, from Mozilla's point of view, there is little reason to
distinguish the use of tiles by contributors when using one stumbling
app as against any other. Yet I can imagine that this would give Mozilla
enough pause to decide not to allow this.
Thanks for clarification on these issues. If I can reuse the tiles used
by MozStumbler, it will save me much time. If not, at some point I'll
loose a week trying to produce similar tiles from OSM data.
cheers,
~adrian
Mozilla may be able to help the development of stumbling applications
since Mozilla already has access to map tiles. This mail is a request
for guidance on the re-use of the tiles currently provided as part of
the MozStumbler Android app.
In summary, my questions are:
0) why does MozStumbler not include any copyright notice on its tiles?
1) can the tiles used by the MozStumbler mapping panel be reused?
2) can the tile service used by MozStumbler be reused by third party
stumbler applications?
Stumbling works better with a map, both to stumble one's way forward
productively and to stumble one's way home.
The quickest way to provide a map for the context is using a
tessellation of image 'tiles' showing a map and overlaying positions on
such a background. The 'web' has standardized on a particular set of
tiles (invented by the Google Maps project) so most mapping libraries
can handle such tiles. However, applications wanting a tile map still
need to
1) have the right to show such tiles
2) have the right to distribute such tiles, and
3) have some way to provide such tiles to users.
Solving the issue of providing tiles to stumbling apps is a first step;
eventually, I suspect we will want a general solution to providing map
tiles on the platforms where Mozilla and its community are active, most
notably for me on Firefox OS; this mail is about stumbling apps but the
answers to some of these questions may influence the larger question.
The first of these issues, having the right to show such tiles boils
down to having the right to use some source of geographic data and
having some way to generate tiles from that data. Generally, in the free
software world we use the OpenStreetMap (OSM) data set and some free
software to make the tiles. The use of OSM data carries with it the
requirement to label the map '(c) OpenStreeMap contributors'.
0) why does MozStumbler not include any copyright notice on its tiles?
The MozStumbler app has a mapping panel. The background map is built
from tiles obtained from an online web service, a service which is
apparently under some commercial contract. However, the map does not
show any copyright notice.
Is the lack of a copyright notice because this is not needed according
to the commercial contract because the original producer has full rights
to the underlying data? (Alternatively, this lack of copyright notice
might simply be due to an oversight or to work being in progress on the
MozStumbling app.) I am not clear if the data used for the tiles are at
all derivative of OSM data.
The second two questions are trying to see if the existing tile service
can provide any help in getting tiles to stumblin' users. There are two
approaches to this: a download bundle or a live service. If the tiles
can be reused, I could provide them as a static resource of my web app
for users. If the tile *service* can be used, then users could get the
tiles directly from the network (possibly caching the tiles temporarily
or permanently locally).
1) can the tiles used by the MozStumbler mapping panel be reused?
Given that Mozilla is paying for the provision of map tiles this
aggreement might cover both the right to access and use the tiles and
the service providing the tiles when requested by the MozStumbler
applications; alternatively, Mozilla might only be paying for the
service, with the tiles and underlying data being available for free.
If the tiles were free for reuse, we would be able to reuse them in any
of several ways. For offline access, tiles could be provided a static
files in the app. The size impact is managable for any zone where re-use
will be intensive; storing a set of tiles from a z level of 10 to a z
level of 14 covering 1600 km^2 (40kmx40km) requires only about 6 MB.
2) can the tile service used by MozStumbler be reused by third party
stumbler applications?
This is probably not allowed by the terms of the contract or because
Mozilla is worried about the cost.
However, from Mozilla's point of view, there is little reason to
distinguish the use of tiles by contributors when using one stumbling
app as against any other. Yet I can imagine that this would give Mozilla
enough pause to decide not to allow this.
Thanks for clarification on these issues. If I can reuse the tiles used
by MozStumbler, it will save me much time. If not, at some point I'll
loose a week trying to produce similar tiles from OSM data.
cheers,
~adrian
Felix Baumann
Aug 4, 2014, 11:09:54 AM8/4/14
to dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
Hi Adrian,
*0) *It actually does contain copyright notices: Menu -> About
there's just not enough space in the map page
and as far as I know every Android app shows copyright notices on the
about page
and in any case: as you already stated, MozStumbler needs to contain
copyright notices.
*1) *Of course they can be reused.
You can find the URL in the following file: MapActivity.java
<https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/blob/master/src/org/mozilla/mozstumbler/client/mapview/MapActivity.java>
private static final String COVERAGE_REDIRECT_URL =
"https://location.services.mozilla.com/map.json";
it's just a redirect though since the tile URL might change in the future.
->you need to parse the JSON file to get the tiles url
current content of the json file:
{"tiles_url": "https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/"}
I don't think this is documented anywhere though
@hannosch are you planning to add a page to the API documentation about
this or is it listed elsewhere?
for the OSM map MozStumbler uses Mapbox as a provider (see about page)
*2) *Yes, MozStumbler just uses an OSMDroid.jar file to render the map.
But I'm not too familiar with the implementation, so i cannot help you
there.
https://code.google.com/p/osmdroid/
https://github.com/osmdroid/osmdroid
or are you talking about Mapbox when you say service? -> take a look at
1) then
As far as I know you can use Mapbox for free (you need to create an
account) but I'm not familiar with the licenses.
https://www.mapbox.com/
https://www.mapbox.com/developers/
If you need infos about the API take a look at the following page:
https://mozilla-ichnaea.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
In general you spend to much time on interpretating on facts that were
wrong :).
Regards,
Felix
> _______________________________________________
> dev-geolocation mailing list
> dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
>
*0) *It actually does contain copyright notices: Menu -> About
there's just not enough space in the map page
and as far as I know every Android app shows copyright notices on the
about page
and in any case: as you already stated, MozStumbler needs to contain
copyright notices.
*1) *Of course they can be reused.
You can find the URL in the following file: MapActivity.java
<https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/blob/master/src/org/mozilla/mozstumbler/client/mapview/MapActivity.java>
private static final String COVERAGE_REDIRECT_URL =
"https://location.services.mozilla.com/map.json";
it's just a redirect though since the tile URL might change in the future.
->you need to parse the JSON file to get the tiles url
current content of the json file:
{"tiles_url": "https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/"}
I don't think this is documented anywhere though
@hannosch are you planning to add a page to the API documentation about
this or is it listed elsewhere?
for the OSM map MozStumbler uses Mapbox as a provider (see about page)
*2) *Yes, MozStumbler just uses an OSMDroid.jar file to render the map.
But I'm not too familiar with the implementation, so i cannot help you
there.
https://code.google.com/p/osmdroid/
https://github.com/osmdroid/osmdroid
or are you talking about Mapbox when you say service? -> take a look at
1) then
As far as I know you can use Mapbox for free (you need to create an
account) but I'm not familiar with the licenses.
https://www.mapbox.com/
https://www.mapbox.com/developers/
If you need infos about the API take a look at the following page:
https://mozilla-ichnaea.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
In general you spend to much time on interpretating on facts that were
wrong :).
Regards,
Felix
> dev-geolocation mailing list
> dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
>
Adrian Custer
Aug 4, 2014, 12:04:11 PM8/4/14
to dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
On 8/4/14 12:09 PM, Felix Baumann wrote:
> Hi Adrian,
>
> *0) *It actually does contain copyright notices: Menu -> About
> there's just not enough space in the map page
> and as far as I know every Android app shows copyright notices on the
> about page
>
> and in any case: as you already stated, MozStumbler needs to contain
> copyright notices.
Ah, hmm, that's probably *allowed* but frowned upon:
> Hi Adrian,
>
> *0) *It actually does contain copyright notices: Menu -> About
> there's just not enough space in the map page
> and as far as I know every Android app shows copyright notices on the
> about page
>
> and in any case: as you already stated, MozStumbler needs to contain
> copyright notices.
****************************************************************
http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
****************************************************************
....
How to credit OpenStreetMap
We require that you use the credit “© OpenStreetMap contributors”.
You must also make it clear that the data is available under the Open
Database License, and if using our map tiles, that the cartography is
licensed as CC BY-SA. You may do this by linking to this copyright page.
Alternatively, and as a requirement if you are distributing OSM in a
data form, you can name and link directly to the license(s). In media
where links are not possible (e.g. printed works), we suggest you direct
your readers to openstreetmap.org (perhaps by expanding 'OpenStreetMap'
to this full address), to opendatacommons.org, and if relevant, to
creativecommons.org.
For a browsable electronic map, the credit should appear in the corner
of the map.
....
****************************************************************
Note that last paragraph and see the page for an example; it is a
*should* so not strictly, legally required but... Also the link needs to
go to the page linked above *NOT* to www.openstreetmap.org and so
probably needs to be called (visible text) "OpenStreetMap" not www.open.....
>
> *1) *Of course they can be reused.
OSM and the tiles are provided without any additional (c). Cool. Now to
figure out how to get some tiles...
NO. THIS IS WRONG. CORRECTED BELOW.
> You can find the URL in the following file: MapActivity.java
> <https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/blob/master/src/org/mozilla/mozstumbler/client/mapview/MapActivity.java>
>
> private static final String COVERAGE_REDIRECT_URL =
> "https://location.services.mozilla.com/map.json";
> it's just a redirect though since the tile URL might change in the future.
> ->you need to parse the JSON file to get the tiles url
>
> current content of the json file:
> {"tiles_url": "https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/"}
Oops, no, this is the low accuracy point cloud data. Interesting, but
not what I want; I'd forgotten about that layer.
https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/0/0/0.png
https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/13/2817/4944.png
The former is the whole world, the latter city center, Montevideo, Uruguay.
>
> I don't think this is documented anywhere though
> @hannosch are you planning to add a page to the API documentation about
> this or is it listed elsewhere?
>
> for the OSM map MozStumbler uses Mapbox as a provider (see about page)
Proxying or redistributing maps served from Mapbox is prohibited. Maps
may be cached on consumer devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets) for
offline use, however, each device must populate its cache using direct
requests to Mapbox and content from a cache may only be consumed by a
single end-user. Further redistribution from a cache is prohibited.
Scraping or any mass download by a single user for purposes other than
offline caching is prohibited.
****************************************************************
SO UNFORTUNATELY YOUR ANSWER TO 1 DOES NOT SEEM TO BE CORRECT. WE CAN
NOT REUSE THE TILES FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN A USER CACHE. Oh well, I'll
have to wait until I can build the downloading into the app to use any
of these tiles.
>
> *2) *Yes, MozStumbler just uses an OSMDroid.jar file to render the map.
> But I'm not too familiar with the implementation, so i cannot help you
> there.
> https://code.google.com/p/osmdroid/
> https://github.com/osmdroid/osmdroid
>
> or are you talking about Mapbox when you say service? -> take a look at
> 1) then
> As far as I know you can use Mapbox for free (you need to create an
> account) but I'm not familiar with the licenses.
> https://www.mapbox.com/
> https://www.mapbox.com/developers/
need offline resources.
How does MozStumbler define its style for the street background layer?
It might be useful for stumbling apps to share a common map style for
some continuity across platforms. It may be that this does not work
design wise but it would be nice to have the style definition anyhow in
case it did.
>
>
> If you need infos about the API take a look at the following page:
> https://mozilla-ichnaea.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
>
>
> In general you spend to much time on interpretating on facts that were
> wrong :).
questions about issues which were not yet facts for me. As background to
readers who don't know much about maps, or do not understand the
pedantic details of copyright law, or do not understand my proximate or
ulterior motives, I tried to give context to my questions.
Beyond that, as I scientist, I spend my entire life being wrong, at
varying, reasonably precisely defined levels of wrongness.
cheers,
~adrian
P.S. the word 'too', as in 'too much' has an extra 'o' in english, in
case that was not simply a typo.
pl6025
Aug 5, 2014, 11:19:37 AM8/5/14
to Adrian Custer, dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
Hi,
On Firefox OS I'm using a stumbler application for the MLS :
https://github.com/clochix/FxStumbler
It can display some points on the map and it's using OSM services.
You can check the code for your own application. On a corner it's writen
(c) openstreetmap .
PL
On Firefox OS I'm using a stumbler application for the MLS :
https://github.com/clochix/FxStumbler
It can display some points on the map and it's using OSM services.
You can check the code for your own application. On a corner it's writen
(c) openstreetmap .
PL
Adrian Custer
Aug 5, 2014, 12:33:35 PM8/5/14
to dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
On 8/5/14 12:19 PM, pl6025 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Firefox OS I'm using a stumbler application for the MLS :
> https://github.com/clochix/FxStumbler
> It can display some points on the map and it's using OSM services.
Ooops, that sounds illegal too:
> Hi,
>
> On Firefox OS I'm using a stumbler application for the MLS :
> https://github.com/clochix/FxStumbler
> It can display some points on the map and it's using OSM services.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_usage_policy
"Requirements
Heavy use (e.g. distributing an app that uses tiles from
openstreetmap.org) is *forbidden* without prior permission from the
System Administrators.
..."
So maybe FxStumbler got permission somehow; I wonder if Marketplace checks.
Regardless, there are probably few enough users of FxStumbler for now
that this abuse of OpenStreetMap resources, if, in actuality, it is an
abuse, does not matter greatly.
cheers,
~adrian
Felix Baumann
Aug 5, 2014, 3:52:54 PM8/5/14
to dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
certified apps are able to use, when they are in the store.
You can only get it from GitHub.
I cannot evaluate how far the usage of OSM in MozStumbler and FxStumbler
is illegal. But discussion is always good.
-> so you could open an issue on GitHub to inform clochix about it.
>> *1) *Of course they can be reused.
>
> Okay. So, unless I hear otherwise, I will presume that the data are
> (C) OSM and the tiles are provided without any additional (c). Cool.
> Now to figure out how to get some tiles...
>
> NO. THIS IS WRONG. CORRECTED BELOW.
>
There are two layers of tiles: One showing the coverage points (MLS) and
OSM provided by Mapbox.
And about everything else:
I thought you were asking whether you could use such a map in your app.
Which should be possible as far as I understand it, since each user of
your app is able to load the map from mapbox through your app.
(it's not included in your app and each user accesses the map independently.
I mean why shouldn't you be allowed to let users cache OSM maps through
your app?
OSMAnd is doing so as well. It saves vector maps on your sd card. And it
is a successful, commercial app in the play store.
Or are they paying for the access to OSM?
Pls ask someone with more knowledge about this topic though,
since I'm not a jurist.
I'm sorry for offending you with my last sentence in my last email...
(I just wanted to tell you that you were debating with yourself on the
possible reasons/answers to your questions instead of waiting for an answer.
But I make this mistake myself to often and I definitely didn't want to
lecture you for it. I often debate too much as well.)
Regards,
Felix
Chris Peterson
Aug 5, 2014, 8:42:56 PM8/5/14
to mozilla-dev...@lists.mozilla.org
On 8/4/14 9:04 AM, Adrian Custer wrote:
> Ah, hmm, that's probably *allowed* but frowned upon:
>
> ****************************************************************
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
> ****************************************************************
> .....
> Ah, hmm, that's probably *allowed* but frowned upon:
>
> ****************************************************************
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
> ****************************************************************
>
> How to credit OpenStreetMap
>
> We require that you use the credit “© OpenStreetMap contributors”.
>
> You must also make it clear that the data is available under the Open
> Database License, and if using our map tiles, that the cartography is
> licensed as CC BY-SA. You may do this by linking to this copyright page.
> Alternatively, and as a requirement if you are distributing OSM in a
> data form, you can name and link directly to the license(s). In media
> where links are not possible (e.g. printed works), we suggest you direct
> your readers to openstreetmap.org (perhaps by expanding 'OpenStreetMap'
> to this full address), to opendatacommons.org, and if relevant, to
> creativecommons.org.
>
> For a browsable electronic map, the credit should appear in the corner
> of the map.
hi Adrian, you are corect. When displaying OSM tiles, it looks like
> How to credit OpenStreetMap
>
> We require that you use the credit “© OpenStreetMap contributors”.
>
> You must also make it clear that the data is available under the Open
> Database License, and if using our map tiles, that the cartography is
> licensed as CC BY-SA. You may do this by linking to this copyright page.
> Alternatively, and as a requirement if you are distributing OSM in a
> data form, you can name and link directly to the license(s). In media
> where links are not possible (e.g. printed works), we suggest you direct
> your readers to openstreetmap.org (perhaps by expanding 'OpenStreetMap'
> to this full address), to opendatacommons.org, and if relevant, to
> creativecommons.org.
>
> For a browsable electronic map, the credit should appear in the corner
> of the map.
MozStumbler needs to display the OSM credit on the map view itself. I
filed a MozStumbler bug report to fix this:
https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/issues/757
Mozilla pays Mapbox to serve map tiles. I believe Mapbox's tiles are
derived from OSM data but I don't know if they are derived from OSM art.
MozStumbler uses the osmdroid map library to render the tiles. osmdroid
may cache the tiles locally on the sdcard. The cached tiles may be
indirectly reused by other apps using osmdroid, but I do not know
whether Mapbox's license allows anyone to redistribute the tile files
directly.
Mozilla's MozStumbler builds include our Mapbox API key. MozStumbler
builds compiled by contributors or fdroid.org do not have a Mapbox API
key, so the build automatically defaults to the osmdroid's default tile
server (tile.openstreetmap.org).
chris
Hanno Schlichting
Aug 6, 2014, 3:52:35 PM8/6/14
to Adrian Custer, dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
On 04.08.2014, at 18:04 , Adrian Custer <a...@pocz.org> wrote:
> On 8/4/14 12:09 PM, Felix Baumann wrote:
>> current content of the json file:
>> {"tiles_url": "https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/"}
>
> On 8/4/14 12:09 PM, Felix Baumann wrote:
>> current content of the json file:
>> {"tiles_url": "https://d17pt8qph6ncyq.cloudfront.net/tiles/"}
>
> Oops, no, this is the low accuracy point cloud data. Interesting, but not what I want; I'd forgotten about that layer.
>
>
>> I don't think this is documented anywhere though
>> @hannosch are you planning to add a page to the API documentation about
>> this or is it listed elsewhere?
The “dot cloud” consists of map tiles generated and hosted by Mozilla. I’d consider these tiles to be public domain data and they don't need any copyright information.
>> @hannosch are you planning to add a page to the API documentation about
>> this or is it listed elsewhere?
As Felix mentioned, there’s a map.json file that contains the current base url for those tiles. It’s currently not an official API, and only used by MozStumbler. If there is interest from a second project to use that tile layer, I can make this a public and documented API.
>> for the OSM map MozStumbler uses Mapbox as a provider (see about page)
>
> ****************************************************************
> Proxying or redistributing maps served from Mapbox is prohibited. Maps may be cached on consumer devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets) for offline use, however, each device must populate its cache using direct requests to Mapbox and content from a cache may only be consumed by a single end-user. Further redistribution from a cache is prohibited. Scraping or any mass download by a single user for purposes other than offline caching is prohibited.
> ****************************************************************
>
> SO UNFORTUNATELY YOUR ANSWER TO 1 DOES NOT SEEM TO BE CORRECT. WE CAN NOT REUSE THE TILES FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN A USER CACHE. Oh well, I'll have to wait until I can build the downloading into the app to use any of these tiles.
From my point of view, as Mozilla we want to use our commercial mapbox contract only in apps and webpages that we publish ourselves. Primarily because we need some way to ensure that the map tiles are only used for the intended purpose.
We specifically don’t want to get into the business of hosting the world base map, as that’s an area where there is already a wide variety of choice out there, both in terms of hosting map tiles yourself as well as different vendors, for example http://switch2osm.org/providers/
In an ideal world, there would be a HTML5 “map” element, which would allow you to render a map and let the operating system handle the fetching and offline caching of map tiles. And instead of each app developer, each OS or user could choose the base map provider they wanted. But unfortunately we aren’t there yet.
> How does MozStumbler define its style for the street background layer?
>
> It might be useful for stumbling apps to share a common map style for some continuity across platforms. It may be that this does not work design wise but it would be nice to have the style definition anyhow in case it did.
I’d leave it to each app, if they want to identify themselves as part of the Mozilla community, or if they want to retain their own visual style.
Hanno
Kevin Everets
Aug 7, 2014, 7:45:43 AM8/7/14
to dev-geo...@lists.mozilla.org
On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Hanno Schlichting <hschli...@mozilla.com>
wrote:
> The “dot cloud” consists of map tiles generated and hosted by Mozilla. I’d
> consider these tiles to be public domain data and they don't need any
> copyright information.
>
Unfortunately, it can be a bit tricky to put a work in the public domain,
and doing so tends to require an actual grant or release. Wikipedia has
some info on it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_the_public_domain
The recommendation there is to use a CC0 license to have the desired effect.
> From my point of view, as Mozilla we want to use our commercial mapbox
> contract only in apps and webpages that we publish ourselves. Primarily
> because we need some way to ensure that the map tiles are only used for the
> intended purpose.
>
> We specifically don’t want to get into the business of hosting the world
> base map, as that’s an area where there is already a wide variety of choice
> out there, both in terms of hosting map tiles yourself as well as different
> vendors, for example http://switch2osm.org/providers/
> In an ideal world, there would be a HTML5 “map” element, which would allow
> you to render a map and let the operating system handle the fetching and
> offline caching of map tiles. And instead of each app developer, each OS or
> user could choose the base map provider they wanted. But unfortunately we
> aren’t there yet.
>
Why is it that Mozilla doesn't want to get into the business of hosting the
world base map? Though there's a wide variety of choice out there, as you
noted there would be advantages to creating combined tiles for the purposes
of stumbling. There are other places that I could see a base map being
very useful, especially in FirefoxOS. An HTML5 "map" element would have to
acquire the tiles from somewhere, and why should Mozilla not be an option
for that?
Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider
for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes
against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
> The map style is based on Mozilla’s corporate identity and style guide (
> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/websites/community/overview/).
> We currently don’t follow the style guide for the stumbling app, but we do
> for the website.
>
What parts of the stumbling app do you feel should be altered to better
reflect Mozilla's style guide? That page only seemed to indicate Tabzilla
and the Open Sans Light font, but I don't think either are used for Fennec
(though I could be wrong). A Tabzilla-like feature would be more work, but
we could change the font if required. Are there any other elements that
would be worth examining?
Cheers,
Kevin.
wrote:
> The “dot cloud” consists of map tiles generated and hosted by Mozilla. I’d
> consider these tiles to be public domain data and they don't need any
> copyright information.
>
and doing so tends to require an actual grant or release. Wikipedia has
some info on it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_the_public_domain
The recommendation there is to use a CC0 license to have the desired effect.
> From my point of view, as Mozilla we want to use our commercial mapbox
> contract only in apps and webpages that we publish ourselves. Primarily
> because we need some way to ensure that the map tiles are only used for the
> intended purpose.
>
> We specifically don’t want to get into the business of hosting the world
> base map, as that’s an area where there is already a wide variety of choice
> out there, both in terms of hosting map tiles yourself as well as different
> vendors, for example http://switch2osm.org/providers/
> In an ideal world, there would be a HTML5 “map” element, which would allow
> you to render a map and let the operating system handle the fetching and
> offline caching of map tiles. And instead of each app developer, each OS or
> user could choose the base map provider they wanted. But unfortunately we
> aren’t there yet.
>
world base map? Though there's a wide variety of choice out there, as you
noted there would be advantages to creating combined tiles for the purposes
of stumbling. There are other places that I could see a base map being
very useful, especially in FirefoxOS. An HTML5 "map" element would have to
acquire the tiles from somewhere, and why should Mozilla not be an option
for that?
Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider
for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes
against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
> The map style is based on Mozilla’s corporate identity and style guide (
> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/websites/community/overview/).
> We currently don’t follow the style guide for the stumbling app, but we do
> for the website.
>
reflect Mozilla's style guide? That page only seemed to indicate Tabzilla
and the Open Sans Light font, but I don't think either are used for Fennec
(though I could be wrong). A Tabzilla-like feature would be more work, but
we could change the font if required. Are there any other elements that
would be worth examining?
Cheers,
Kevin.
Hanno Schlichting
Aug 7, 2014, 11:22:55 AM8/7/14
to Kevin Everets, Moz-Dev-Geolocation
Hi Kevin.
On 07.08.2014, at 13:45 , Kevin Everets <ke...@everets.org> wrote:
> Unfortunately, it can be a bit tricky to put a work in the public domain, and doing so tends to require an actual grant or release. Wikipedia has some info on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_the_public_domain
>
> The recommendation there is to use a CC0 license to have the desired effect.
Ah ok, I’m not a lawyer myself, and just use CC-0 and public domain to mean the same thing. Do you think we should an explicit CC-0 text to our image tile data?
> Why is it that Mozilla doesn't want to get into the business of hosting the world base map? Though there's a wide variety of choice out there, as you noted there would be advantages to creating combined tiles for the purposes of stumbling. There are other places that I could see a base map being very useful, especially in FirefoxOS. An HTML5 "map" element would have to acquire the tiles from somewhere, and why should Mozilla not be an option for that?
It comes down to a question of focus and limited resources. We cannot do everything at Mozilla. With openstreetmap there already is a vibrant open community and choice between commercial vendors around mapping and we cannot really add anything to that community at this point. For this particular project, we’d rather focus on the cell/wifi data that is specific for the geolocation purpose and not get into the broader area of mapping, points of interest data or any of the related domains.
> Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
It’s certainly a gray area. We need to limit what we do with Mozilla resources. To my knowledge we generally don’t host community websites on our own infrastructure or allow community members to run services on our infrastructure. You can argue about whether hosting map tiles is more similar to such general infrastructure tasks, or if it’s something more specific for this particular project.
In concrete terms we’d need to spent the time to learn about tile servers, how to operate and run them, how to fit them into our infrastructure, how to update their data based on the openstreetmap source and how to style the maps. I think none of that is core to this project and it would take away time from our small team. I think that time is better spent on working on the core problem of this project.
> What parts of the stumbling app do you feel should be altered to better reflect Mozilla's style guide? That page only seemed to indicate Tabzilla and the Open Sans Light font, but I don't think either are used for Fennec (though I could be wrong). A Tabzilla-like feature would be more work, but we could change the font if required. Are there any other elements that would be worth examining?
That page was only meant as an entry point to the style guide. There’s many more sections in it. I should have linked to the landing page at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/.
The style guide specifically addresses websites and presentations, but has no dedicated section on apps. I think there’s a good amount of flexibility in what you can take from the guide, and to what extend the unique nature and requirements of the app should drive its UI. But I’m really not a designer / UI person.
Hanno
On 07.08.2014, at 13:45 , Kevin Everets <ke...@everets.org> wrote:
> Unfortunately, it can be a bit tricky to put a work in the public domain, and doing so tends to require an actual grant or release. Wikipedia has some info on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Granting_work_into_the_public_domain
>
> The recommendation there is to use a CC0 license to have the desired effect.
> Why is it that Mozilla doesn't want to get into the business of hosting the world base map? Though there's a wide variety of choice out there, as you noted there would be advantages to creating combined tiles for the purposes of stumbling. There are other places that I could see a base map being very useful, especially in FirefoxOS. An HTML5 "map" element would have to acquire the tiles from somewhere, and why should Mozilla not be an option for that?
> Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
In concrete terms we’d need to spent the time to learn about tile servers, how to operate and run them, how to fit them into our infrastructure, how to update their data based on the openstreetmap source and how to style the maps. I think none of that is core to this project and it would take away time from our small team. I think that time is better spent on working on the core problem of this project.
> What parts of the stumbling app do you feel should be altered to better reflect Mozilla's style guide? That page only seemed to indicate Tabzilla and the Open Sans Light font, but I don't think either are used for Fennec (though I could be wrong). A Tabzilla-like feature would be more work, but we could change the font if required. Are there any other elements that would be worth examining?
The style guide specifically addresses websites and presentations, but has no dedicated section on apps. I think there’s a good amount of flexibility in what you can take from the guide, and to what extend the unique nature and requirements of the app should drive its UI. But I’m really not a designer / UI person.
Hanno
Asa Dotzler
Aug 7, 2014, 3:36:39 PM8/7/14
to mozilla-dev...@lists.mozilla.org
On 8/7/14, 4:45 AM, Kevin Everets wrote:
> Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider
> for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes
> against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
This seems like a misconception or misunderstanding. Mozilla has been
> Having one map provider for Mozilla built binaries and a different provider
> for community built binaries bothers me a bit, and feels like it goes
> against the ethos (as I understand it) of Mozilla.
providing binaries that differ from source because of third party or
other legal issues for as long as I've been a part of the project which
goes back to very near the beginning.
We are often considerate in the design process of downstream customers
and work ensure that any services we get from third parties can be
easily removed or swapped out with alternative services, but we've never
committed to, or in practice demonstrated that, everything in our
products must be available along with our source code.
Other Free Software projects may be much more religious about this, but
Mozilla is a very practical organization and if we're going to continue
to be successful in our mission to make the Web a better platform for
developers and to make the Web a better experience for people
everywhere, we have to pick our battles. That means we sometimes include
third-party features in our products rather than building them
ourselves. That means that not every service in a Mozilla product can be
enabled for every downstream user of Mozilla source code.
- A
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