[Search-l] Widgets

[Jimmy Wales]

Mark (Markie) wrote:
> hmm this is the problem i kinda outlined above, as to what amount do we 
> accept the use of unfree services that may use info from our users in 
> the "wrong" way, such as google, yahoo etc.  i agree that we should try 
> at all costs to stay free, but to what limits will we accept the use of 
> apis etc from proprietaries?

I think that's an excellent excellent question.

I don't know the answer.

We link to lots of proprietary things, of course.  Nothing wrong with 
that, we are a search engine.  And some things are not likely to be 
free-as-in-speech for a long time, if ever.

Realtime weather data could be, in theory, at least for the US, not sure 
about other places.  But the government publishes a ton of weather 
information in pretty unusable formats... we could sort it out and have 
a nice system... maybe. :)

But movie showtimes in my area?  Hard for that to be free.


--Jimbo