Just wanted to point out I am not taking a side. I think the commercial/acedemic/government issue is one where there is a center ground. The NWS needs to be the data gatherer, central warning site and provide the general forecasts. As such, all of this data should be available to the public. The private concerns should be allowed to give their opinions and do their own forecasting. If they want to go further, they can install a data gathering network, radar network and their own supercomputer clusters to do forecasting. Accuweather and other commercial areas provide services that NWS can not supply.