Re: GeoLocation API: 1. Source type of information / 2. Information from specific source type

I think that without providing the information as to the origin of the location information:
- people will not stop asking for this,
- people will keep coming up with esoteric use cases. There may not be a blanket use case for this that satisfies the geo working group. There is no guarantee that accuracy+highAccuracy indicate the location data source, yet many applications want to know the source of the location info.

Certainly, I have my use-case. For data collection purposes, I need to know/document the source of the geolocation information. GPS is a free system worldwide, and storing collected location data has no legal implications. Whether or not this is true for commercial location services, there are many who would want to steer well clear of commercially provided location sources due to legal risk. 
Do I want to find out in country X, that large scale data collection based on commercially-provided locations has legal implications?

Are there specific applications where only GPS locations are considered valid over the long-term? Or that wifi-derived locations should be explicitly ignored due to their potential instability? 
 
Another use case is for debugging, API users should be able to debug the location info themselves, not have to make guesses about the quality of the GPS signal causing an accuracy overlap with Network-based locations. I have the same problem this user does. I suspect anyone getting into commercial-level applications of geolocation will want to be able to make their own determinations about quality by combining the source with the accuracy. 

Received on Wednesday, 13 August 2014 00:42:50 UTC