have the australian site (or any other country specific site for that matter) cut a deal with GC.com to allow them to access the GC.com facilitys, data etc etc, and negotiate with them to pay a smaller price for that?


By this I would propose that we pay a fee for our premium memberships in AU$$, then GCA.com.au would contribute a portion of that to the mothership (GC.com).

I personally know that being an Aussie, in Australia, with Aussie currency, I would much rather pay my fees in Aussie clams and would also prefer to log into a local site that has more "locals" and rather than filtering through the forums of non relevant country specific issues just to get to something about a local issue etc.


I have also noticed that a few caches are being muggled or coins/bugs are being taken from caches around the country of late, I am currently working on an alteration to the standard GC.com printout that you can stick into your cache (saying "if you found this by accident" etc), and I think it should have some sort of detail about the age groups that do caching (young kids, family's etc) and that by muggle'ing the cache they are being nasty to those who really want to participate and play the game of caching!!

What do ya think?

The free and open philosophy of this site uses the term FREE in both senses of the word (free as in free beer and free as freedom).
GCA is not affiliated with groundspeak or geocaching.com and I can imagine that there won't be any reciprocal membership arrangements ever....

You don't need to/shouldn't have to pay people for the privilege to geocache!

The local forums, all the Google earth links and stuff here are provided free!

Post your cache note here on the wiki once it is done!

You don't! Access to geocaches is free, here and on .com

On gc.com, it's paid for by premium memberships, TBs and such, some advertising and the occasional product promotion.
Here, it's paid for by ideology (bless 'em!)

Provision of a geocaching website is not free. Use of one for free is just requiring someone else to pay.

Ooh what's that on the ground there? I believe it's a split hair!!!

That's the nature of hosting a website, whether it be here, Google, your banks' online facility, whatever. It's usually the host that bears the bandwidth cost.

this is a duplicate thread
please direct replies to http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=6776

Yes, and the host has to have some way to recoup that cost. i! recoup it by selling off some gold bullion every now and then , groundspeak do it by charging for features, etc.


What's your point, O Ginger Haired One?

The bank charges fees, Google charges advertisers to show their wares to you as you use their 'free' search engine, etc. Somewhere along the way, it's not free.

Saying that geocaching should be free (as in speech) seems naive to me. CraigRat contributes by coding, but most of us are just spending Georges' money for them. I'm a happy freeloader, but I think it's important to realise that a philosophical position of "free cache listings are our right!" needs to acknowledge the money that's being spent by someone to keep it free.