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Re: [ccp4bb]: PROTEIN CONTACTS



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I think there are at least two good reasons applicable to most people
subscribed to this list to balk at license fees.

1) We use free software all the time, often of very high quality.
Consequently, if someone who uses those free programs writes a program
him/herself it is expected that it is also made available at no cost.

2) The majority of people are not full-time contact analysis afficionados. We
need to do it the odd time and just count contacts perhaps separated by type
(Hbond etc) and calculate buried surface area. There is a plethora of free
tools that do all or part of this. Likely they are not as complete or user
friendly as your package but paying $500 for convience and "giving in to our
free software spirit" is a significant price

Many software packages adopt a policy that commercial users pay a fee while
academic users pay by citating your work.

Bart


On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Paula Regina Kuser Falcão wrote:

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> ***          CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk         ***
>
> Dear Dima,
>
>       I admit that I am slightly perplexed by your statment (not that I would
>       like to initiate or add to known polemic about open source and free
>       accesss software, but still...);  Let me consider for a moment the "TOO BAD"
>       at the end of your msg. refering to US$500 fee charge for access to SMS
>       version that is capable of analyzing local files.
>
>       If you accept that SMS has a good suit of tools (with credentials of
>       PDB which mirrors it at their site) and on top of that, it does
>       what one would like to be done, than US$500 is much better deal than
>       starting do develop it yourself. The latter solution will cost you
>       multiples of SMS fee just in salaries! So actually, one might consider
>       this as a good deal.
>
>       In addition, here in Brazil we did pay for academic license for packages
>       with similar logistics w/r/t charging fee. It should not be surprising
>       that  we also need some funds to further develop this package which  we
>       offer for free to whole comunity for all deposited structures.
>
>       Best regards
>
>       Paula Kuser
>
>
> > >      You can have a full and detailed report of contacts between
> > molecules using
> > >      the Contacts module from SMS at http://www.cbi.cnptia.embrapa.br/
> > >      You will find a pointer to Contacts on the left side of the page.
> > >
> > >      We also have a mirror in the USA: http://trantor.bioc.columbia.edu/SMS/
> >
> > It really looks like a very useful suit of the programs. Problem is,
> > in order to use it with your own not yet deposited data, you have
> > to pay for $500 for registration or $1500 to get local copy or claim
> > that you don't receive any research funding. Too bad.
> >
> > Dima
> >
> >
>
> Paula Kuser
> Centro de BioInformática Estrutural
> http://www.cbi.cnptia.embrapa.br/
> Embrapa Informática Agropecuária
> Telefone: (19) 3789 5830
> Av. Dr. André Tosello, s/n, Campinas, SP
> Caixa Postal 6041
> Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz"
> CEP 13083-970 Campinas (SP) - Brasil
>

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Dept. of Medical Microbiology & Immunology
University of Alberta
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