Sent to CCL by: "Jim Kress" [ccl_nospam() kressworks.com]
Daniel and Nuno,
Gaussian and the other commercial entities have used or are using
force
(the
government) to compel their neighbors, friends, relatives, people
unknown
to
them in other states, etc. to reduce those peoples standard of living in
order to fund Gaussian and the other commercial entities activities
through
grants that support their development, either from universities or
in-house,
for people and for infrastructure. They then turn around and sell the
results of those activities back to the same people who were forced to pay
for them in the first place. They also impose price increases
('upgrades')
on the users who then get even more taxpayer money to pay for those.
It's an endless cycle with the loser being the average citizen who is
being
slowly bled to death to support the research activities of people in
Universities and Government and at Gaussian and the other commercial
entities who use their work.
The SBR, university 'patents', and any other taxpayer funded program
suffer
from the same moral issues.
Work derived from taxpayer funding should be freely available to those
taxpayers who have paid for it. That is the case with GAMESS, with NCARS
CAM3 and MAGICC, Jay Ponder's Tinker, and other codes. That is the way it
should be.
Profiteering by Gaussian and the other commercial entities should not be
allowed. I will be speaking to my congressman to explore current law as
well as proposing future law that will remedy this issue.
We won't even get into the fact that there is no Constitutional authority
for the Federal Government to provide any funding of this type,
outside
the
needs of national defense.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: T. Daniel Crawford crawdad*exchange.vt.edu
[mailto:owner-chemistry^ccl.net]
Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 5:24 AM
To: Kress, Jim
Subject: CCL: Filters
Sent to CCL by: "T. Daniel Crawford" [crawdad!A!exchange.vt.edu] Jim,
The only problem with this argument is that the government is
specifically
*encouraging* the development of commercial products with
such funding.
Indeed part of the point of federal and state grants is to
stimulate technological and economic development (cf. SBIR
grants). With this in mind, then, one should not consider
for-profit computational chemistry software development
unethical if one is not also willing to consider
university-based patents of new drug candidates similarly
unethical. At least the software developers can argue that
they actually produce a final product ready for delivery to
the consumer, unlike most patent-holders.
On the other hand, the government does *not* usually intend
its funding to be continued beyond the initial R&D phase, but
instead to lead to financial independence once the product is
ready. Some software companies may continue to receive
direct grants or, more commonly, they may have private
arrangements with government-funded faculty at various
universities to include new code exclusively in the company's
program package. I would definitely call this "double dipping".
-Daniel
On 10/27/05 1:54 AM, "Jim Kress ccl_nospam.:.kressworks.com"
<owner-chemistry:+:ccl.net> wrote:
>
> Sent to CCL by: "Jim Kress" [ccl_nospam%a%kressworks.com]
They're not
> working for free. Their using the government as an agent to take
> money from their neighbors to pay for their work (i.e. government
> grants). Then they sell the results of that work to the people who
> paid for it originally (i.e. taxpayers).
>
> That's called double dipping and it's immoral.
>
> Remember, all government money comes from us taxpayers. No matter
> what any government employee tells you, there is no money
tree in Washington.
>
> Jim
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Nuno A. G. Bandeira nuno.bandeira_-_ist.utl.pt
>> [mailto:owner-chemistry/a\ccl.net]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 12:02 AM
>> To: Kress, Jim
>> Subject: CCL: Filters
>>
>>
>> Sent to CCL by: "Nuno A. G. Bandeira"
>> [nuno.bandeira**ist.utl.pt] Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Much computational chemistry code, written with taxpayer
>> dollars, is
>>> not open source. One wonders why.
>>
>> I don't. It would be nice to have everything for free wouldn't it ?
>> Except people don't normally work for peanuts...
>>
>>
--
T. Daniel Crawford Department of Chemistry
crawdad At vt.edu Virginia Tech
www.chem.vt.edu/faculty/crawford.php
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