[margalabargala]

> The first 500K calls a month is free with a $99 a year[...]

They may be included with your $99/year subscription, but to call them "free" is like saying that the groceries I'm holding are free because I just gave the cashier money.

[hoosier2gator]

I would say it's more like saying that driving on the highway is free because you pay taxes. I doubt anyone is buying a developer account specifically for weather API calls.

[margalabargala]

Lots of people drive on highways who pay no highway taxes, foreign tourists for example.

It's free like riding the monorail at Disney World is free; included in the cost of your entry ticket, and utterly inaccessible to anyone who has not paid.

[op00to]

> Lots of people drive on highways who pay no highway taxes, foreign tourists for example.

Highways are mostly funded through gas taxes, and registration fees for EVs. Even foreign tourists buy gasoline, or drive an EV that paid its registration fee.

Also, the Disney World monorail is outside the ticket gates. You can ride it without a ticket.

[margalabargala]

OK fine pick some random thing that's "free" within the ticket gates but isn't what people go there for.

[scarface_74]

Foreign tourists very much pay for driving on the highways on the way to Disney World through higher sales taxes, tolls, hotel taxes etc. There is a reason that Florida is state tax free.

Source: I live 30 minutes away from Disney and partially moved to Florida when I started working remotely to save money on taxes.

[bigiain]

Lots of people get the weather forecasts from tv or radio for free. Weather forecasts aren't "utterly inaccessible" the way the Disney monorail is.

[margalabargala]

Not from the Dark Sky API they don't.

We're not talking about "weather forecasts", we're talking about a specific set of weather forecasts accessed in a particular way.