Subject: Re: CCL:Gaussian 98 makefile policy

From: Laurence Cuffe <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:19:03 +0000

Date sent:      	Mon, 10 Dec 2001 15:03:25 -0500 (EST)
From:           	[email-masked] (Mike Frisch)
Subject:        	CCL:Gaussian 98 makefile policy
To:             	[email-masked]

>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.
I think this is a tremendous advantage to the gaussian suite of 
programs, and should not be taken likely.

  Gaussian distribute the source code, the makefiles and a very 
comprehensive test suite.  It is too easy for people to alter the 
makefile until they get the program to compile and then stop right 
there without doing any further testing.

Gaussians explanation of why they don't want unauthorised 
versions of the makfile distributed makes total sense to me now 
that its been explained and should, I think, be respected.
All the best
Laurence Cuffe
>
>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.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:06:35 -0500

I think Marc has a good point, but also recognize that it does take a certain
man-power commitment on all concerned.

In addition, there is something for everyone here:  The Intel X86 Linux compiler
is free, if support is not needed....  and is tuned for the various Intel
hardware...

John McKelvey

"M. Nicklaus" wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Dec 2001, Mike Frisch wrote:
>
> 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
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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---

From: Max Valdez <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:10:21 -0600

Hi CCL'er

With all my respect, and sorry for my bad english.

I think Gaussian is a great tool, but it has a LOT of little secrets and
"bugs", and the support is not so good, I don't think the spend that much money
on customer support, given the price of the product.

With that in mind, it's so unfair that Gaussian doesnt have a more open policy
to allow end users to comunicate improvments, or new ideas specially for new
compilers and boxes.

I have to say that from like 10 questions that I have asked to the gaussian
team support, like 2 have been answered, and those were the "easy"-well-know
ones, and they were answered when I finally asked here at CCL list. So, you
guys dont go saying that your support is so good.

Finally, would be easy to ask customers to give details about the compiling,
plataform, etc when they ask a quesion?, give an alert like : If you didn't
used our supported compiler we cannot give you good support, try a supported
compiler !!

Thanks

Max