Bug#726230: iceweasel: broken geolocation due to missing google api key

[Hanno Schlichting]

Hi,

Hanno from Mozilla's Location Service (MLS) here.

Are you still interested in using MLS for iceweasel? Any questions you have on this?

Technically I can issue you a new API key. You then need to then add this during the configure stage of the build process and change the default geo.wifi.uri preference to:

https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=%MOZILLA_API_KEY%

Not quite sure how exactly you configure things, but you can add a "ac_add_options" to the mozconfigs with something like:

ac_add_options --with-mozilla-api-keyfile=/path/to/mozilla-geoloc-api.key

Where the file contents are the key (a new uuid I'll generate and send you). An example mozconfig is at https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/config/mozconfigs/linux64/common-opt

This procedure will work in Firefox 38 and later. In earlier desktop versions, we didn't yet hook up the API key system.

For open-source projects we understand that it might not be possible to keep this key secret, but that it has to be checked into a public source control system. That's ok, we just need the ability to issue a new key should the old one get abused. The key concept is a bit of an annoyance, but is a legal requirement we get from using some partner services.

As to the quality aspect, we are starting to get much better with MLS. Today MLS is used by default by our Firefox Nightly and Developer Edition channels. It's also been used since last year by Fedora's Firefox package in addition to none-browser projects like Gnome's geoclue library and the KDE desktop.

If you have further questions, feel free to discuss here, mail me in private or contact us over at https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation

Cheers,
Hanno