Groundspeak has always aggressively protected it's database. While as a user it kinda sucks from a business standpoint I can understand it. I don't think an open API works with their current business model. Unlike google gs isn't making their cash with advertising and giving away open access can be hard to monetize with a non ad supported model.
That being said gs needs to improve their dev cycle. It's crazy as noted here that cgeo can be written and supported by one guy and it's beating gc.com's own efforts. If I were gc I would hire the author and or buy his app rather than wasting cycles fighting him.
_JohnnyCache wrote:
Just remember that any of the Android geocaching applications with real time gc.com access, especially c:geo, is just screen scraping the gc.com site which makes for a quick development effort but is susceptible to any site updates and most important of all is against Groundspeak's Terms of Use. So what I see is that Groundspeak will most likely go after these scraping applications after they release their Android application and eliminate them. Much like they stopped users from executing GSAK macros against their site. Lets just hope Groundspeak's offering is of high quality.
Completely understand that. I am hoping for a quality app released by them but after reading some more iPhone posts about the newest version I seriously doubt it will be. It is a shame I am forced to use an app that violates their ToU, and normally I would not do that, but in this case its about my enjoyment. Honestly, using this app is like me using my phone to view their site, there is absolutely no difference. If there were better alternatives I would use one.
Their best bet would to just provide an open API, because literally there is no way to stop apps from scraping data as its just the info pulled from their pages.
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