[Wikitech-l] Fwd: Public API for Wikimedia map tiles to be discontinued in 45 days

[crosspost from Maps-l] Today the Wikimedia Foundation is announcing the deprecation of the public API for Wikimedia map tiles. Around mid October the Foundation will end support for the Wikimedia Maps Service API [1]. This change affects people using Wikimedia maps on their own website or app. Maps on the Wikimedia sites, in Wikimedia-hosted tools and gadgets, and on maps.wikimedia.org won't be affected. This decision was made based on recent outage incidents, primarily due to spikes in third party usage, along with an analysis showing that more than a third of maps provided are to non-Wikimedia services (including many to for-profit organizations). After the most recent incident [2], the service was limited so that only cached maps tiles would be available. While this protected the servers, it made the service unpredictable and highlighted the unsustainability of our tile service. So, we have made the decision to discontinue the maps APIs for non-Wikimedia users. This change will allow our teams working on Maps to focus on the sustainability of the maps used within Wikimedia projects. You can follow the implementation of this change on Phabricator [3]. Best, Erica Litrenta [1] https://maps.wikimedia.org/osm-intl/ [2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation/20200204-maps [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261424 -- Erica Litrenta Manager, Community Relations Specialists https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Elitre_(WMF)