In message , Graham P Davis
writes
Dave Ludlow wrote:

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:17:58 +0000, "Keith (Southend)"
wrote:

Bonos Ego wrote:
I would be more than happy to work for the Met Office sorting the data,
as a qualified Management Accountant I'm very good with data
manipulation & presentation.

It's a shame that people like us are sidelined as though we are stealing
something, yet would love to be able to provide a service that people
want, not what 'managers' think they want, and do it for fun and free.

Yes indeed. There are many examples of services, data, computer
programs etc. which are provided for a fee to commercial users and
which are free of charge for non-commercial use. I see nothing special
about weather data; it should be provided free of charge except to
commercial users.


Some years ago, a university student spent six months in the Met Office
extracting data for research purposes. I expect he was given some help in
finding the data and in the use of extraction methods. All this was for no
charge. It was then discovered that he had been working for a
meteorological consultancy who were presumably making a nice profit out of
the deal. I think this event might have made the Office a little paranoid
with respect to supplying data for non-commercial use.


There's no right or wrong answer to this one. It all depends on how you
choose to look at it. In the U.S.A. the government takes the view that
the US economy benefits best by allowing free and open access to weather
data to everyone, including commercial weather companies. In Europe,
weather data is seen as a resource to generate income for the state
meteorological services. Very high prices are therefore placed on data
and products. This stifles growth of the private sector and probably
reduces the overall revenue generated by the provision of weather
services. As I said, there's no right and wrong here. It's merely two
different points of view.

Norman.
(delete "thisbit" twice to e-mail)
--
Norman Lynagh Weather Consultancy
Chalfont St Giles 85m a.s.l.
England