Subject: Re: High Cost of Comp. Chem.

From: [email-masked] (Henry Rzepa) (Henry Rzepa)
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 1994 18:35:11 +0000

Perhaps as a chemical community we should learn from
the Maths, Physics, and Biology communities. Is my perception
correct that much more HIGH QUALITY free software is
available in these areas for a variety of platforms? More importantly,
the ethos that "we can only use well supported software"
(at a significant annual maintenance charge!) may not apply so
much as it does in chemistry.  As the object orientation becomes stronger,
so maintenance might just become less of a problem.

As for the hardware, it has become a fact of life that every 4-5
years, a sea change occurs in the machine flavour of the year, and
a lemming like migration occurs. In my time (which I have to confess
goes back to paper tapes, Hollerith cards, etc etc) I have seen  about
five flavours come (and perhaps go) in chemistry, especially in graphics! In
university, we of course survive because the turnover of graduate
students occurs on a similar time scale; they don't notice, only the
harassed project supervisors who neve quite understand the latest
operating systems do!

Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
[email-masked] via Eudora 2.01, Tel:+44  71 225 8339, Fax:+44 71 589 3869.
>From June '94: (44) 171 584 5774, Fax: (44) 171 584 5804
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa.html