Loose Change
Posted on 1st April 2011
Many years ago I wrote a set of scripts and modules that together formed a way for me to access eBay internationally. I frequently bought records from the UK, US, Germany and Australia, so those were the plugins that I focused on, but the intention was to allow more to interface to other eBay sites. I even did a presentation at YAPC::Europe in 2004, called The Perl Auctioneer, which explained my progress.
As part of the currency calculations and conversion, I used the same site that eBay themselves were using, XE.com. As I became more involved in other projects, and my international eBay buying declined, my efforts to finish and release the Perl Auctioneer waned. However, I was still using the currency conversion module, so released it as a stand-alone package. In time this became Finance::Currency::Convert::XE.
Although I have occasionally updated the module, I no longer use it. However, others still do. XE.com themselves are very protective of their data, understandably, and are very resistent to screen scrapers. Even though their own terms of use allow for personal use, and do not explicitly say screen scrapers are prohibited, they do make accessing the data from the command line very difficult. They have very recently upgraded their website with further measures to prevent automated tools scraping their data.
As I no longer use the module, I feel I have two choices. Pass on the distribution to someone else, who does want to invest time and effort on the module, or to abandon the module and distribution and remove it from CPAN. As the module does not currently work with the latest XE.com site, unless someone does come forward I plan to remove the distribution from CPAN by the end of the month.
If you would like to take over the module, please email me (barbie@cpan.org) and let me know your PAUSE ID. I'll then put the wheels in motion to give you maintainer/author permissions.
Comments
No Comments
