Wants to help developers to come up with interesting stuff around Wayfinder service.
"Given our decision to stop developing turn by turn location based services as part of our core business, it seemed an obvious choice to make the code we own open source” said Pieter Knook, director of internet services at Vodafone Group.
"We look forward to seeing its continued use in all sorts of different applications in the future."
The code will be made available on github.
Vodafone bought Swedish mapmaker Wayfinder in 2009 in a bid to cash in on location based services. But then Google went free on Maps Navigation and Nokia introduced free turn-by-turn navigation on Ovi Maps, and the market disappeared.
So now Voda is following the others. If it can't make money from LBS, it can at least make them sticky, and thereby keep customers loyal to its network.
It will offer all Wayfinder Access subscribers a fixed refund on their existing service.
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