News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries. Parent comment

Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by corprew on Sunday October 29, 2017 @02:29PM (#15580567)
It looks like they've got that covered: "If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of what3words, whether they are individuals, businesses, charitable organisations, aid agencies, governments or anyone else can continue to rely on the what3words system." -- https://what3words.com/pricing/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by mikeash on Sunday October 29, 2017 @02:34PM (#15580593)
Is the code and documentation placed into escrow with a third party to ensure that this happens?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by hobofan on Sunday October 29, 2017 @02:44PM (#15580643)
So what happens in the case that England (their place of business) issues trade embargos with any of those countries?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by EGreg on Sunday October 29, 2017 @02:56PM (#15580712)
What if they don't keep their word? A lot will come to depend on this.

Geohash is patent free btw. I am sure something can be done here as well.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by hobofan on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:11PM (#15580809)
The what3words algorithm has a patent pending though[0]. Let's see if it will stand up to geohashes as prior art.

[0]: https://www.google.com/patents/US20160073225

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by aw3c2 on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:13PM (#15580816)
And this https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had-inve...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by s0rce on Sunday October 29, 2017 @02:50PM (#15580676)
Not particularly reassuring, can't someone just create an open system with a similar concept and release the mapping.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by hobofan on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:02PM (#15580751)
When someone told about what3words, they also told me that they made money by selling shorter or more pleasant word pairings to whoever was willing to pay, but the only reference to that I could find is [0]. Having that requirement would make it much more difficult to build such a system.

Apart from that, it's basically "just" geohashes with a different (population-density based) encoding.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/what3words/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by mtmail on Sunday October 29, 2017 @04:41PM (#15581301)
Those were called One Words. That was their old businesses model and abandoned/pivoted.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by tyingq on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:46PM (#15581026)
>can't someone just create an open system with a similar concept

There's a pretty good, working parody at http://what3fucks.com

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by evancox10 on Sunday October 29, 2017 @07:34PM (#15582178)
And that system maintains a hierarchical relationship, you and your neighbor share the first n words. Makes much more sens e
[ Parent | on HN ]