5 ms·

So it's like DNS for GPS coordinates. Neat!

• krallja 10y ago
  Yes, except unlike DNS, it's centralized into a single database and you may have to pay a license fee to read from it.
  • themihai 10y ago
    You pay for domains so it's not all that different.
    • LittlePeter 10y ago
      you do not pay for dns queries
      • themihai 10y ago
        You still pay for writes(i.e. domain registration). You can argue that DNS and domain registration are different things but in reallity they are inter-dependent so there is still a cost and the system is "owned" by several entities(i.e. ICANN)
    • pif 10y ago
      No! You pay only to register, but reading is free.
      • themihai 10y ago
        what's the difference? On DNS you pay for the "writes" so DNS is not free either.
        • PeCaN 10y ago
          What3Words is free for writes (presumably it's generated from an algorithm and there aren't really "writes") and you pay for reads. Kind of a big difference. With DNS you only have to pay if you want a domain. I can freely do a DNS query to resolve "flamingmongoosefarts.com", but with What3Words I (might not) be able to freely determine where flaming.mongoose.farts is.
          • themihai 10y ago
            DNS query is free because someone pays for the domain registration and your DNS queries(DNS queries/servers cost too). I can see how What3Words could charge the address owner a fee for its address to be licensed publicly just like the domain registration publishes your NS records as long as the maintenance fee is paid. Tbh I must admit that they are slightly different scenarios because the domain name registration is slightly distributed but my point is that public DNS/Domain registration is neither free nor open. They are controlled by various entities/corporations so they are not the best examples.
  • creshal 10y ago
    It can't be that hard to reverse engineer the algorithm, can it?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • rakoo 10y ago
      It's not hard, but it's unsurprisingly against the ToS (http://developer.what3words.com/api/licence/ http://developer.what3words.com/api/licence/) "You shall not use the API for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of the Service or use the API to create a Product which functions substantially the same as the API and offer it for use by third parties. You must not pre-fetch, cache, index, copy, re-utilise, extract or store any what3words Data"
      • EdHominem 10y ago
        Anyone in Somalia want to scrape the DB?
      • mort96 10y ago
        That only mentions using their API, not reverse engineering the algorithm.
        • rakoo 10y ago
          ... which is patented (see the other thread), so you're opening a whole another can of worms that frankly doesn't sound much better.
  • eonw 10y ago
    that didnt dawn on me until you said it... quite the catch.