The accuracy of Mozilla Location Service (MLS) has steadily declined. With no plans to restart the stumbler program or increase investments to MLS we have made the decision to retire the service. I...
well that sucks a lot, a bunch of projects including microG have relied on it.
There's an interesting comment on this post about Graphene OS' plans in this area, it's quite a long comment so I'll link it. The first para reads:
GrapheneOS Foundation has been planning to host a network location service for GrapheneOS and projects collaborating with us for a while now. We've received significant funding we can put to use for this to make a high quality, modern implementation on both the client and server side. A new unified app (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth beacons) for gathering data to publish as fully open data could also be part of it. We also plan to make a SUPL implementation as part of the same service as an alternative to our Google SUPL proxy to replace it as the default in the long term.
The former lead dev (who is still part of the team) seems to think many people are out to get him for no good reason. He has claimed repeatedly that Calyx devs have sent harassers to target him for years (from spamming gore or nazi content in the matrix channels, to swatting him and almost getting him killed by the police) and that they constantly speak ill of him, but has never actually shown any proof. Instead, he sources his own past claims about how he has shown proof, in a sort of endless loop.
Also, youtuber Techlore made a 5 second joke about GOS's extreme approach to security in his mostly positive review of it, which the lead Dev took as a personal attack. After which he started attributing harassment to him too. He made a later video talking about it, and Louis Rossman commented on it expressing concern. After which, the lead Dev accused him to being complicit in the harassment.
Eventually he stepped down as project manager, citing how the harassment and bullying he constantly got was too much. But to my knowledge no one has actually seen it ever.
Yea, the whole thing has always given me a lot of pause when I comes to GOS. I'm sure it's still an awesome solution, but makes me think twice. In the end I have literally zero need or desire for anything Google running on my phone so I'm on calyx.