From owner-chemistry: at :ccl.net Fri Oct 28 12:42:00 2005 From: "david.giesen~!~kodak.com" To: CCL Subject: CCL:G: Filters; really Gaussian, Inc. and funding Message-Id: <-29815-051028102606-12815-Y6ZhkU4Aps5erekMRqS3PQ[*]server.ccl.net> X-Original-From: david.giesen-x-kodak.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 09:01:43 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Sent to CCL by: david.giesen:_:kodak.com I must confess to being completely confused by this discussion. It attempts to somehow create two groups - those who receive government funding and should give away their products for free, and those who don't receive funding and may charge for their services/products. It baffles me that anyone thinks there is a single product on the market in the United States that hasn't benefitted in some way from government funding. First and foremost, corporations frequently apply for, and receive, government research grants. I doubt anyone truly expects IBM, Phillips or Ford Motor Company to give away their products. Thus, there really is no distinction between academic groups (or scientific corporations such as Gaussian, Inc.) and your friendly local Fortune 500 company. To treat one differently than the other makes no sense to me. Secondly, companies are often the happy beneficiaries of tax breaks, "economic incentives" or whatever else you want to call them. Sure, this type of government funding is very slightly more opaque in that the company only gets to keep its own money. But ultimately the other tax payers have to pay more taxes to make up for the money not paid by the company, and the result is the same: the "little guy" pays more money, and the "big guy" has a little more money. And finally, we all understand that the government paid for the roads that a company's employees must drive on to get to work, the sewers that carry water into and out of the company, the police that keep the employees safe and also the consumers safe so they can buy the company's products, the Social Security checks that allow the company to pay artificially low wages because the employees don't need to truly fully fund their own retirement, etc. etc. etc. If the government doesn't pay for these things, the company must, so these things are also clearly "government funding" of the company. Drawing some line in the air and saying that software produced using some sort of government funding MUST be free but it is OK to sell government funded computers, razors, cameras and cars just doesn't make any sense to me. Also, drawing a line in the air and saying research grants are government funding that matters, but other types of government funding don't matter just doesn't make any sense to me either. Dave Giesen (An employee of the Eastman Kodak Company expressing his own private opinions)