Groundspeak responds about C:geo

I have heard a number of people complain that groundspeak personally is working to destroy other apps.  Especially with this change in  maps.  It has bugged me because with my work as a moderator, and reviewer, Groundspeak has never mentioned doing anything to hurt another program.  Even in the day when they asked me to moderate and pull non-geocaching.comapps out of forum listing.  They were more worried about internal affairs then the work of others.

Today tBryan at groundspeak posted this note to C:geo

At Groundspeak, we have been contacted by a number of users who are angry about the impact of recent geocaching.com site changes to C:Geo users. In the spirit of transparency, here is some additional information that will hopefully help clarify what happened:

For what it's worth, our decision to remove Google maps from our site had nothing to do with C:Geo. The loss of functionality from the Cgeo application was an unintended consequence of our site change and the site change was made out of necessity due to Google's new License fee policy for Map use. We simply removed the Google maps from the site and replaced them with Open Street Maps where our former Beta Maps existed. We didn't realize that it had affected C:Geo until we were told by customers, and we certainly didn't do it with any intent of harming the application or negatively affecting geocachers.

We have offered C:Geo (and many other developers in the geocaching community) a royalty free license to use our API for the purpose of building and maintaining their app. This means that we are not asking them for any money, and they are welcome to keep their app free or charge for it. If they choose to use the API, it is fully supported and we won't likely have any similar issues going forward when we make site changes. We currently have over 100 third party developers who are either testing the API or actively using it to develop applications for geocachers (see www.geocaching.com/live and scroll down for a list of active third party api-enabled applications, including other Android apps). The offer to C:Geo stands and we'd be happy to work with them going forward. I believe we can work with them to provide a variety of functions that will ultimately make C:Geo better and more stable (at least as far as geocaching.com site changes are concerned). There may be other issues with implementation but we are happy to work through them with developers. If you ask any of the other API-enabled developers, I believe they'd happily confirm this.

Although the API is provided royalty free for the developer, there are some usage limitations. The most notable one is that basic members are limited to viewing the full details of 3 traditional caches per day. Trackable functionality, viewing basic details or caches and other features are virtually unlimited. Hopefully the basic functionality is enough for users to get started geocaching. It also allows developers to innovate, using geocaching data, with no upfront cost from Groundspeak and a built in user base. Premium Members have almost unlimited access to all cache data from geocaching.com via the API, using any API-enabled applications that they own.

So, with this new API, one of the new benefits of a $30 Premium Membership is that all geocaching.com api-enabled apps (like those on the list referenced above, and many other third party apps currently in development) have full functionality for all Premium Members. A Premium Membership has been $30/year since we introduced it ten years ago. We have never raised the price and we have worked very hard to add value to it over the years. Hopefully you'll agree that having unlimited access to geocaching data through any application you choose would be worth the price of a Premium Membership. From our perspective, we believe we'd be providing you with fair value and you'd be helping to support geocaching.com and the associated API.

So, rather than crippling other apps and C:Geo, I believe that we have opened the door to enabling other apps with geocaching data. We believe that the results will ultimately benefit the global geocaching community, including users of C:Geo. Many third party developers seem to agree and we are excited to see what Geocaching API-enabled products and services they can build for everyone.

I hope this helps. Thanks again for your feedback.

Sincerely,

Bryan

I am sure many will not believe it, but he did put it out there.  Groundspeak is more worried about making their site better, and making sure changes do not effect the API.  There are some cool things coming out in the next few months, and I am sure they are trying to not "break" what is there when new things are rolled out.  

My two cents worth...

c:geo does not use the API.  It was their decision to make, and they made it.  There is a consequence.  Every time there is a site upgrade, programs that do not use the API are at risk of a complete crash, or breaking the software.   That is the risk they take.  Unfortunately Groundspeak gets the bad reputation for someone else pulling of maps or web pages, and gets the blame far more often than the program creators.

Update on 2012-02-23 17:10 by firennice

Update on 2012-02-24 01:34 by firennice

Some may not have seen this in the comments so I thought I would post it.  From SammyHP

I'm one of the core developers of c:geo. We talked several times with Groundspeak about the API but there are some reasons why we don't use it currently:

Why c:geo is not using Groundspeak's public API

Let us answer this once and for all in one place. But let's start with basics.
There is very simple reason why us and GC.com can't sync. We are FREE, opensource application, they are corporation. We give our software for no money, they would like to make a big profit with a service. They don't like what we do, we don't like what they do. It's like fire & water, cat & dog, hell & heaven....
The initial idea of c:geo is to provide a free (and open-source) app for mobile geocaching for everybody.

What would change with the API?

- c:geo only for premium members
- no support for OpenCaching or other platforms than gc.com
- Groundspeak-ads

Also there are problems with development:
- development would take 2-4 months to implement the API
- during this time there would be only access to a testing-server, no nightly-builds
- devs are using the development-build for caching
- the API requires a private key for the app. But c:geo is open-source. There are a lot of independent developers, but only one would get the key - all other developers wouldn't be able to test what they do
- c:geo no longer open-source
- only few core-developers
- much slower development

The Groundspeak's "public" API would fix most of our current problems, however c:geo would then force users to pay money to a corporation. This is not the opensource spirit.
If the Groundspeak says OK to our idea then c:geo might have API some day...

Update on 2012-02-24 05:13 by firennice

I think there are two things here to look at.

1-Should geocaching be free?

2-Should access be granted to everyone free?

The first argument is pretty tricky.

  The answer to that answers the second part.  Does groundspeak manage geocachine well and resposibly.  Perhaps an opensource setup could be created.  However I am pretty sure it would be crappy.  Most open source projects end up pretty bad.  There are exceptions to the rule, however 4-5 years down the line and most are closed, and people walk away.

Perhaps it is the American in me, but making a profit can be a great equalizer.  The bandwidth needed at groundspeak would be pretty impressive.  I am sure the costs are pretty high as well. The servers used, maintenance on them, an office, programmers, legal, all eat into the costs. 

There is only one site that is managed and taken care of full time, and there is only one web site that is any good.  Is that coincidence?  No.  If another site had a full time programmer, etc they would look better as well.  Some of the other sites are well done, for the budgets they have.   So if you decide that it costs, then someone has to pay.

To me the reason it is so good is that we have so many people working on geocaching, finding ways to make it fun and interesting.  They have had their failures (waymarking) , successes (geocoins), and stagnant areas (Wherigo).  Yet they keep trying new things and delivering to others.  See the Map improvements, pocket queries, challenges.  They list thousands of new caches every day, and review for old dead ones to take off (something that few other sites seem to do).   They serve as arbitrators, remove people that are troublemakers, and try and make sure there are no major issues that show up.

Onto the second.

If you decide they do need money, where does it come from.  Well Every visit to a page with an advertisement helps.  Premium members don't see some of those ads on the pages.  So you have paid to have some of them removed with your few dollars every month.  You can go to your computer and pull a handful of caches off with your gps, and head out.  If you are not a member, you get a few ads to help pay for them.  (kind of, they get a dollar or so every 1000 hits if I remember my online advertising).

Now onto phones.  They make no money from a phone app. The app creator gets funds from ads.  In other words when you use your phone app, you now put groundspeak in a position of having to pay for bandwidth and managing those services, at no profit.  None at all.

So there are only two ways to make some money from a phone app.  Limit use to premium members (they do that now).  If your app does not use the API, does not encourage premium members,  and scrapes the site then you are a burden, and a drain on the rest of us.  Or you can buy the groundspeak app.  I am not sure how it reacts with those that are not premium member.