Subject: CCL:Gaussian 98 benchmark for PC systems

From: "C. Klein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 10:22:26 -0800

Richard Walsh's suggestion sounds very reasonable to me. Gaussian98 may
be a nice program (once you have it running) but the company's policy,
translated to the automobile business, appears to be:

"OK, we'll sell you the car (program), but you have to produce the
proper key (makefile) yourself.. if you copy the key from someone, we'll
sue you ... maybe we can give you the key for the trunk.". Rather
strange way of doing business. 

Regards, 

Chris Klein

>Dear Listers,
>
>        We have got the information from Gaussian Inc. that distributing the
>modified version of makefile or the instructions is violation to the licence
>agreement.
>

What about a simple description of how to do it without
any lines directly copied from the file? That is your
intellectual property which I assume that you are free
to distribute?

Regards,

Richard Walsh

---

From: [email-masked] (Mike Frisch)
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 15:03:25 -0500 (EST)

> strange way of doing business. 

This is not a fair statement of our policy.  We provide source code, which
few other vendors do, and makefiles for supported platforms and compilers.
We have a careful testing procedure to help ensure that the program is
fully and correctly functional with the supported configurations.

People can do what they want locally to make things run on on other systems,
but passing around makefiles for unsupported platforms which have not been
subject to careful testing is not helpful to users and also technical support
more difficult for us.  We originally started to forbid this after a number
of problems occurred with people unknowingly using unreliable and incorrect
versions.  In this particular case, where there is a carefully tested and
supported version (makefile and compiler), I think most users are much better
off using it.

To pursue your analogy, we're not saying you can't use the car, we're saying
that we'll show you the blueprints to help you fix your car, but you can't
start building your own inferior copies and selling or giving them to people.

I do agree that this is a strange way of doing business.  The normal way
of doing business, which is what most of our competitors do, would be to not
license the source code at all and hence not be subject to criticism of the
terms of the source license.

Michael Frisch
Gaussian, Inc.

---

From: "M. Nicklaus" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 18:37:10 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)

> fully and correctly functional with the supported configurations.

To satisfy both sides: Why not work closely together with this particular
user, who seems to have done a lot of the work already, and go through the
testing and validation procedure for this compiler/makefile/hardware
combination to produce an official version that can be released to the
user community as an alternative to the standard compilation?  I am sure
that many people who are trying out alternative makefiles would be happy
to run the necessary test jobs and evaluation procedures to produce the
official Gaussian "blessing" in collaboration with Gaussian, Inc.,
and if clearly told how to do so (we've offered this in the past...).

Marc

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Marc C. Nicklaus, Ph.D.                 NIH/NCI at Frederick
 E-mail: [email-masked]               Bldg 376, Rm 207
 Phone:  (301) 846-5903                  376 Boyles Street
 Fax:    (301) 846-6033                  FREDERICK, MD 21702      USA
          Head, Computer-Aided Drug Design MiniCore Facility
     Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry, Center for Cancer Research,
 National Cancer Institute at Frederick, National Institutes of Health
       http://rex.nci.nih.gov/RESEARCH/basic/medchem/mcnbio.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Richard Walsh <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 16:06:11 -0600 (CST)

>start building your own inferior copies and selling or giving them to people.

Mike,

Your points about the issues of support are fair, but the above does not
extend to the issue here. This is a NEW blue print--granted designed with 
the help of yours--to "fix" (extend/improve) the performance of the same 
model. 

You can't be suggesting that new blueprints are only improvements when
in the position of the original authors, but become inferior as soon
as they are given others?

What say you for this case--if no one asks for your support on someone
elses blueprints? There would seem to be a benefit to Gaussian unless
there are variables that must remain hidden from the user community.

We have just purchased another site license for the product and continue
to like using it.

Regards,

rbw
#---------------------------------------------------
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---

From: [email-masked] (Mike Frisch)
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 17:36:05 -0500 (EST)

Richard Walsh writes:
> Michael Frisch writes:

I'm suggesting that without proper testing, one should reserve judgement.
As is typical for such things, in this case, there isn't even a claim made
that the entire test suite has been run, or that the answers have been
carefully checked.  It would be extremely unusual for a build with a new
compiler to work on the whole test suite the first time, without a single
routine needing reduced optimization due to compiler problems.

> there are variables that must remain hidden from the user community.

In the past, we have received all the complaints and blame when things don't
work, regardless of where the problem originates, so I don't think things
work the way you suggest in practice.  The original motivation for the
restrictions in the license was that computer vendors would give people
"improved" makefiles which increased performance at the expense of wrong
answers, and then we got the complaints that our software didn't work.

Mike

---

From: "Jim Kress" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 21:21:38 -0500

> there are variables that must remain hidden from the user community.

Wonderful idea in theory but does not work in practice.  People may claim
they will never ask for support but the reality is that they (or others)
will ignore their promise in the face of pressing, unanticipated future
needs.

Having been in a software support organization for several years I can
appreciate Gaussian's reluctance to encourage uncontrolled modification of
their product and the support requirements that will arise from changes
outside the ken of Gaussian.  They have enough problems supporting their
paying customers who use the software Gaussian purports to understand.  They
don't need the additional burden of trying to support capricious software
changes that occur outside their ability to control.

Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Walsh" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 5:06 PM
Subject: CCL:Gaussian 98 makefile policy

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