[shaism]

Do you mind elaborating?

I agree that weather data should be public but I don’t see why we should restrict innovation in the private market if there is demand for it.

Also more generally, I see no issue in the government outsourcing work to a competitive private market wherever possible.

[huslage]

I have no issue with it if it is part of a legislative/regulatory framework. This is not inside of any framework. There has been no conversation about privatization of NOAA or any of its functions. These things need to be explicit as part of a democracy.

The current regime has upended that process and has created a situation where the government has no choice but to outsource data gathering to third parties. This is corruption and not in the spirit or the letter of the law.

This startup is attempting to take advantage of an illegal situation which is just ridiculous.

I'm happy if they want to sell fancy weather balloons to anyone that they want, even the government, but selling data back to the government that should be already collecting the data in the first place BY LAW is just corrupt.