void-linux / void-linux/void-packages

[RFC] Geolocation in Firefox - Mozilla Location Services has been shutdown

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@Duncaen is already working on this.

Since Oct 29, 2024.

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Description

Per https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065 since March 27th, 2024 Mozilla Location Services has been returning a 403 response to all location service requests through Mozilla Location Services and the service is now only available for Mozilla's use cases.

Void has used MLS since 2021 commit https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/commit/43366049eb57ad4cf7afad2cc05fd99eaf28f440 which addressed issue: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/issues/34728

Here are a few possible solutions. In no particular order, but numbered for ease of reference:

  1. Use Google Location Services by default. This is upstream Firefox's choice but may not work for Void because of API key issues (see https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/issues/34728 and the linked https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/issues/28233)
  2. Remove the line in vendor.js and expect/help void users to generate their own API keys and add it to firefox
  3. Use geoclue2 as the default geolocation provider (also relied on MLS and can no longer provide WI-FI location)
  4. Use an entirely different location service (it seems https://beacondb.net/ and https://positon.xyz/ are suggested by geoclue)

Of course, other options may be possible or preferred, but until something happens, geolocation will not work in Firefox on Void in the default configuration.

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