20040427: Unidata IDD feed request from a NOAA employee

>From: Clint Rowe <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNL
>Keywords: 200404271405.i3RE5RCT022054 IDD

Hi Clint,

>Any policy for this kind of request?  Obviously, not lightning data, but
>are there other restrictions?

A Unidata university IDD participant can choose -- at its own
discretion -- to feed any non-restricted datastream to sites and even
individuals on a not-for-profit basis and for non-commercial use.  The
UPC has no authority to insist that a university either feed a
particular site or _not_ feed a particular site unless restricted data
is being provided or the provision is being made on a for-profit basis
or for commercial use.  The other point that must be stressed is that
the UPC will not provide support for feeds to non-traditional sites:
neither to the Unidata university providing the feed(s) or to the
recepient.

That being said, we would request that you make your own best judgement
about feeding Mr. Leins.  Hopefully, your decision will be in large
part based on the answer you get when you ask Mr. Leins about the
nature of his request.  We would also like to request that you exert as
much influence as possible to get Mr. Leins to report realtime
statistics back to Unidata _IF_ you decide to provide him with data
feeds.  Another thing to consider in your decision making process is
the quality of the network connection that Mr. Leins would be using for
his data ingest since a site with a poor/intermittant connection can cause
problems for data relay to other sites.  This is especially true if
her/his connection continually drops and reconnects.

For reference, we have been unsuccessful in getting Mr. Polston to
report realtime statistics for his feed(s).  His unwillingness (through
inaction, not by direct refusal) to participate in the IDD like other
sites (by reporting realtime statistics) makes some of us a little
suspicious that his use of the data he receives may violate our
principle of free provision of data for non-commercial uses.  Since
Unidata has no desire or capability to act as a policeman to limit use
of the data, we would rather that universities that decide to provide
data feeds to non-traditional sites perform due diligence in
ascertaining the intended use of the data and strongly encourage the
site(s) to fully participate in the IDD by reporting realtime
statistics.  If someone wants a data feed for commercial use, s/he can
either purchase a NOAAPORT reception system from any of the many
vendors of such systems, or develop such a system her/himself.

>I checked the NOAA web page and he is a NWS employee ...

So is Mr. Polston.

If you would like to discuss this matter further, I would be more
than willing to talk with you on the phone.  My office number is
(303) 497-8642.

Cheers,

Tom

>------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------
>
>Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 04:19:51 +0000
>From: "Daniel Leins" <address@hidden>
>User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) 
>Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)
>X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
>To: address@hidden
>Subject: Unidata LDM Request
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>X-UNL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
>X-UNL-MailScanner: Found to be clean
>X-MailScanner-From: address@hidden
>
>Mr Rowe,
>
>My name is Dan Leins, and I am a meteorologist with the National Weather 
>Service in Pleasant Hill, MO.  I am writing because I would like to ask 
>if I can have access to the Unidata LDM upstream feed available at the 
>Univ of Nebraska.  I am doing some programming research outside of work 
>with NAWIPS/GEMPAK/Garp/etc... and will need to access real time data in 
>order to complete what I'm working on.  Kevin Polston, a meteorologist 
>with the National Weather Service Training Center in Kansas City had 
>mentioned to me that he contacted you in the past with a similar 
>request, and that you were gracious enough to work with him on it.  Any 
>help you could give me would be greatly appreciated, and I'll provide 
>you with any information you need if you're able to go through with this.
>
>Thank you,
>Dan Leins
>
>------------- End Forwarded Message -------------
>
>====================================================================
>Clinton M. Rowe
>Associate Professor 
>Meteorology/Climatology Program                  phone:(402)472-1946
>Department of Geosciences                          fax:(402)472-4917
>University of Nebraska-Lincoln                        address@hidden
>
>
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