"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."
In addition to making the software open source and in recognition of the specific needs of the blind and partially sighted community Wayfinder Systems will offer all Wayfinder Access subscribers a fixed refund on their existing service. Full details of this will be made available in September on the Vodafone website.
Product developers are supportive of the decision. “At Code Factory we welcome this Vodafone initiative and we are willing to add new products to our accessible navigation software product line. Mobile Geo, our GPS solution for Windows Mobile has become a world reference among the blind community and we are now ready to start new GPS projects,” explained Eduard Sanchez, Code Factory’s CEO.
More information regarding this service is also available via Vodafone’s opensource portal.