[horde] Weather Block and the Weather Channel

[Alexander M. Wirtz]

Just FYI, I've got a very nice, canned reply, showing that they have no 
clue of OpenSource or what it means to provide an interface to a XML 
service. How am I supposed to encrypt my developer credentials in a 
non-compiled language like PHP?

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Alexander,

Thank you for your e-mail.  We hope that developers, such as yourself, 
that are interested in redistributing our data through a unique 
application will find a way to monetize their offering, be it through 
donations or a small monthly fee such as $0.99 per user, that is 
sufficient to pay for a subscription to a content source that is hosted 
in a reliable manner from a trusted content provider.

The Weather Channel is continuing to offer an array of free offerings, 
just not the weather.com XML Data Feed.  We are retiring the feed along 
with its supporting infrastructure.  You can view these free offerings 
at http://www.weather.com/services/weather-gadgets/.

Regards,

Scott H. Zucker
Director, Revenue Management & Optimization

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From: Alexander M. Wirtz [mailto:alexander at wirtz.cc]
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 10:11 AM
To: The Weather Channel
Cc: API, The Weather Channel
Subject: Re: Important Notice regarding your weather.com XML Data Feed



Dear Scott and others,

just wanted to let you know, that I'm quite disappointed by this move 
and thus will discontinue my work on the interface to your XML Data 
Feed, which was contained in my Services_Weather module to PHP's PEAR 
(http://pear.php.net/package/Services_Weather).

I think together with the Horde-Mail Framework the services, provided by 
The Weather Channel, were quite popular, and alltogether you are going 
to lose the OpenSource community as a distribution channel. I was happy 
to oblige to the rules you've created (logo, ads, cache, etc.) and would 
have obliged to new rules as well, if you would've considered continuing 
the XML Data Feed, but with the total shutdown of this service, my 
interest in The Weather Channel is gone.

I wish you success with your new business model, to "optimize revenue", 
hopefully we are all able to find a replacement, even if the service is 
not of the same quality.

Best regards,
Alexander Wirtz

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