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=New Maintainer Wanted=
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=New Maintainer - Unwired Labs=
  
Dear OpenCellID contributors
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Dear OpenCellID contributors,
  
I have maintained the OpenCellID project for several years now including
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Our search for a new maintainer is over! Please join me in welcoming Unwired Labs as the new maintainer of OpenCellID.
* covering all hardware costs for 6 big servers
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* covering all costs for the hosting of 6 physical dedicated servers in a professional environment (Colt and CENTRON)
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* covering all costs for software development of an Android client and all server side programs
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* covering all system administration costs
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* covering the costs of a legal dispute in Spain (which is solved)
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Total cash investment so far has been a serious 6 digit Euros amount plus a lot of my free time.
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As you know, OpenCellID is one of the oldest open-source platforms in geolocation with an active community of users, developers and contributors. The complete development and infrastructure efforts over the last few years haven been funded by ENAiKOON and me personally.  
Unfortunately the recurring costs stay high and the time required to maintain the project alone is serious so I do not want to invest the amount of time and money in the future as it has been in the past.
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But there are also non-commercial issues which indicate that OpenCellID might be no longer relevant:
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We single-handedly overhauled the infrastructure and cleaned the large dataset to make OpenCellID reliable as we know it.
* Mozilla some time ago has launched the MLS service which directly competes with OpenCellID and which is funded by a big organization I cannot compete with alone
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* We never got an offer of any developer to contribute backend software, so there is no software development momentum in the OpenCellID community - MLS is already seriously more advanced
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* We never got an offer of any expert to be part of the admin team and therefore every month I have to cover serious administration costs
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* We never got an offer of any person or entity to cover some of the costs of OpenCellID in general or to do some admin work or other contribution except data contribution
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* There is a big number of users of the free OpenCellID API but only 4 purely commercial users pay a small amount of money for using the API. This monthly income does not even cover a small fraction of the ongoing costs.
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Upside of the OpenCelliD community is that there is a multitude of strong contributors of data including the CellTower Android app and others.
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There’s still a long way to go, however. There are a multitude of new technologies (WiFi, IoT wide area networks, etc) that need to be supported, a lot more data brought in and more hands-on-deck to support the growing community. For this reason, I believe Unwired Labs, a leading geolocation service themselves, will build on the good work all of us have done so far. I hope that the Unwired + OpenCellID combination continues benefiting our community.
  
'''Taking all the above into account it was decided to either shut OpenCellID down or to sell it to someone who would like to maintain it in the future.'''<br>
 
'''In case someone is interested in purchasing the OpenCellID project please let me know by sending an e-mail with your offer to [email protected]'''<br>
 
'''In case there will be no solution in place until end of March 2017 I´ll shut down all OpenCellID services by the end of March permanently.'''
 
  
Cheers Markus
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For any queries, write to the new team at [email protected]
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All the best.
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Cheers, Markus

Revision as of 15:07, 20 April 2017

New Maintainer - Unwired Labs

Dear OpenCellID contributors,

Our search for a new maintainer is over! Please join me in welcoming Unwired Labs as the new maintainer of OpenCellID.

As you know, OpenCellID is one of the oldest open-source platforms in geolocation with an active community of users, developers and contributors. The complete development and infrastructure efforts over the last few years haven been funded by ENAiKOON and me personally.

We single-handedly overhauled the infrastructure and cleaned the large dataset to make OpenCellID reliable as we know it.

There’s still a long way to go, however. There are a multitude of new technologies (WiFi, IoT wide area networks, etc) that need to be supported, a lot more data brought in and more hands-on-deck to support the growing community. For this reason, I believe Unwired Labs, a leading geolocation service themselves, will build on the good work all of us have done so far. I hope that the Unwired + OpenCellID combination continues benefiting our community.


For any queries, write to the new team at [email protected]


All the best. Cheers, Markus