"Weather"
The first commit appears on April 11, 2011 with a small GNOME Shell extension simply called Weather. Elad Alfassa, Timur Kristóf, Simon Legner, Simon Claessens, Ecyrbe, Mark Benjamin, and Mattia Meneguzzo all appear in its early history.
GNOME Shell Extension · Final Version 139
My first GNOMEextension.
OpenWeather Refined was my first GNOME extension project. I used to use this extension, but one day I updated GNOME and the extension never updated with it. Missing the extension, I learned GNOME extension development and updated it to support the new GNOME Shell version. After learning its architectural flaws, I archived the project and rebuilt it in TypeScript with modern async/await workflows.
Retired project · No new releases or compatibility updates
160,000+downloads on GNOME Extensions
v139final published release
GNOME 45–47final supported Shell versions
35 languageslocalization files in the archive
Project timeline
One extension, seven chapters.
My version came much later in a long-standing community project. The first version came along in 2011.
2011–2025from the first preserved commit to the archive
3.3M+recorded downloads across the three GNOME listings
Read the complete AUTHORS file (opens in a new tab)- Elad Alfassa & early contributors
- Christian Metzler · @Neroth
First Appearance on GNOME Extensions
Christian carried the original line forward and published its first accepted GNOME Extensions release on February 23, 2013. That Weather listing would go on to record more than 667,000 downloads.
- @jenslody
The fork becomes OpenWeather
In late 2013, @jenslody forked the earlier extension, moved it to OpenWeatherMap, and gave it the OpenWeather name. Taylor Raack also made a significant contribution in 2018 before the project was marked abandoned in April 2022.
- Jason Oickle · @skrewball
One Day Later
The day after the abandonment notice, Jason Oickle created a continuation, restored the original GNOME Extensions identity, and shipped versions 109 through 121 for GNOME 42–44. That OpenWeather listing now records more than 2.5 million downloads. This is the version I would have used until it stopped being supported at the release of GNOME 45.
- Kenneth Topp · @toppk
Partial Update
GNOME 45 changed the extension platform substantially. Kenneth Topp forked the extension, completed the port, and left behind the bridge that I would find when my old weather extension stopped working.
- Roman Lefler · Me
I turn the compatibility fork into OpenWeather Refined.
I began working from Kenneth’s fork on December 31, 2023 and renamed it OpenWeather Refined ten days later. I added migrations, more providers, current-location support, GNOME 46 and 47 compatibility, and dozens of fixes. Version 139 was the final release, and my listing passed 160,000 downloads.
- SimpleWeather & the archive
I recreate the project for a new age of JavaScript/TypeScript
I started SimpleWeather as a clean TypeScript project on May 30. JavaScript as a language had changed so much since 2011 that I was finding tech debt a growing issue that was causing many difficult to diagnose performance problems. In addition, there was not much abstraction or frontend/backend separation which led to many difficult issues. Once the replacement was ready, I made OpenWeather Refined read-only on July 3, marked its GNOME listing as retired, and pointed users to the new extension. SimpleWeather’s first GNOME Extensions release was accepted one week later.
What remains
The history is still public.
I left the repository intact so contributors keep their credit and future developers can inspect the decisions, releases, and mistakes that led to SimpleWeather.
1,585 commitsPreserved across the project's inherited repository history.
35 languagesCommunity localization work kept with the source.
3 providersOpenWeatherMap, WeatherAPI.com, and Visual Crossing.
GPL-3.0Free software that remains available to study and fork.
The project continued
The maintained version of this idea is SimpleWeather.
I kept the parts that mattered—fast access to a detailed, configurable forecast—and rebuilt everything underneath them.