RE: [ccp4bb]: structure factors etc

["Bernhard Rupp" <br@llnl.gov>]

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> to all doesn't do the same with source code.

I think there is a conceptual difference of some significance:

Structure factors are the primary experimental data, 
and it appears quite odd to me that crystallography 
enjoys the unusual privilege of simply suppressing 
those. That the tendency of structure factor absence 
correlates with poor quality is indeed a concerning fact (ibid.) 

Source code is a different game. First, you don't find it in 
Science or Nature, and second, as long as a program 
verifiably does what it claims to do, I do not care
for the source. And if the program does not, you have 
proof that it failed and can advise/harass the author, 
which makes more sense than to hack the source yourself. 
Who seriously has the time and expertise to hack through 
complex source, say refmac just for example. As long as 
commercial programs crash and destroy work and one has 
zero recourse at all, I think anything that works and 
is free deserves some leeway, source or not.

With absent SFs you got nothing except circumstantial evidence 
to prove that the product is defective (say 1jky, for example). 
And in tragic contrast to death row cases, the jury there tends 
to side with the suspect.

Best regards, BR

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ccp4bb@dl.ac.uk [mailto:owner-ccp4bb@dl.ac.uk] On
> Behalf Of William Scott
> Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 6:47 PM
> To: ccp4bb@dl.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: [ccp4bb]: structure factors etc
> 
> 
> ***  For details on how to be removed from this list visit the  ***
> ***          CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk         ***
> 
> >  if crystallographers would deposit structure factors,
> > PPS: Advertisement: Read 'Homo Crystallographicus' in Structure.
> >
> 
> It always struck me as odd that one of the authors of this and other
> papers that argues so eloquently for making structure factors 
> available 
> to all doesn't do the same with source code.
>