On 17/11/2019 21:28, Mike Easter wrote:
David wrote:
*Is what3words open source like some other geo platforms and services*?

The short answer is simply NO.

The long answer the company provides is because there is a battle
between w3w and opensource advocates.Â* The FOSS folks have
reverse-engineered the algos and provided FOSS alternatives to w3w.

The w3w company is fighting this in social media and otherwise, w/ such
as DMCA takedowns of anything promoting any w3w FOSS alternatives such
as whatfreewords and others.

I understand the concept that if you invent something and you invest
money in it and apply for a patent for the core tech that one has to
fight the FOSS forces.Â* Their patent application goes back to 2013 as
does the company and significant venture investing.

There is another thread around here about OpenStreetMap, which is a FOSS
type project, so they 'don't like' w3w, as they say in their wiki


https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/ind...&oldid=1421526 Â*What3Words
is a commercial, non-open, patented addressing schema. Open data
advocates (such as the OpenStreetMap community) would generally advise
against adopting it all, and we do not add What3Words identifiers into
OpenStreetMap.

The facility has been approved by Apple and is available free of charge
in the Apple App Sto-

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/what3w...82771079?mt=12

I hope this helps.