From owner-chemistry@ccl.net Fri Oct 28 18:15:01 2005
From: "M. L. Dodson bdodson**scms.utmb.edu" <owner-chemistry(-)server.ccl.net>
To: CCL
Subject: CCL:G: Filters
Message-Id: <-29824-051028173828-17265-2Z2evf40bvRHciCvbCNepA(-)server.ccl.net>
X-Original-From: "M. L. Dodson" <bdodson|a|scms.utmb.edu>
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Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:38:16 -0500
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Sent to CCL by: "M. L. Dodson" [bdodson__scms.utmb.edu]
On Friday 28 October 2005 10:53, Aaron Deskins ndeskins%x%purdue.edu wrote:
> 
> Sent to CCL by: Aaron Deskins [ndeskins#,#purdue.edu]
> M. L. Dodson bdodson*|*scms.utmb.EDU wrote:
> 
> >>This topic seems mostly to come down to a discussion of the merits of 
> >>free-market capitalism versus socialism. Who does work better: 
> >>profit-minded citizens or government paid workers? Of course it depends, 
> >>but I think if Gaussian was never commercialized, then we all very well 
> >>could have been stuck using Gaussian 86.
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Why don't we all cool down a little bit and avoid words like
> >immoral and socialism.  The discussion might gain some civility in
> >the process.
> >  
> >
> >I'll only say that if you think open source is socialism, you have
> >missed the point about open source.  Think of peer review as a
> >
> >  
> >
>   ......
> 
> >I'm just trying to inject a little reality about open source into
> >this discussion which has been filled with a lot of misinformation
> >and almost complete lack of appreciation of the real user benefits
> >of the open source s/w movement (far beyond the cost of the s/w).
> >  
> >
> My apologies for use of the "S" word. There was no attempt to imply that 
> open source software is to be equated with socialism; open source is  a 
> great idea for many software packages. The discussion (as I saw it) 
> however was not about the merits of open source software, but whether 
> commercialization of computational chemistry software that may have 
> involved government funding at some point is illegal, immoral, etc.  I 
> am in the camp that believes that some commercialization of academic 
> research is not necessarily a bad thing and in many cases beneficial to 
> the most amount of people.
> 
> Aaron Deskins
> Purdue University
> 

I don't think apologies are needed.  I was just trying to shutdown
a potential flamefest.  I think I made my position reasonably
clear (although using mutt over a ssh link is not as good as my
gui email system).

I think commercialization is probably necessary, so I also do not
think it is necessarily a bad thing either.  My email was only
incidentally aimed at you, my main beef was the subrosa assertions
that open source = bad, commercial = good (because of support
issues, etc).  As a contributor to the FreeBSD project, I can tell
you that in my experience open source COMMODITY software is of
much higher quality than closed.  Of course, IMO.  My additional
point was that there are not enough expert programmers among the
CC s/w users for that assertion to be brought over into this
field in some sort of general way.

Bud Dodson
-- 
M. L. Dodson
Personal:       mldodson-at-houston-dot-rr-dot-com
Work:           bdodson-at-scms-dot-utmb-dot-edu
Work: four_zero_nine-772-2178             FAX: four_zero_nine-772-1790