>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Schmitz <schmitz at biophys.uni-duesseldorf.de> writes:
Michael> Well, I've chalked that one up to the persistent confusion
Michael> about Free, Open and Public Domain software even in the trade
Michael> press. And I've seen way too many license flame wars that
Michael> were carried out by everybody but the real coders to even
Michael> bother.
Both true, but both unfortunate.
Michael> I'm extremely pleased with EMBOSS using GPL though - GCG
Michael> going closed source was a sad day for me, and there's been
Michael> other unfortunate licensing decisions since. There will be
Michael> Debian packages of EMBOSS and RNAfold, there won't be
Michael> packages for other stuff.
I decided a while ago not to use _any_ closed source software for
science if it was at all possible. If you think about it, true peer
review isn't possible unless you can see the source. I'm just waiting
for the inevitable report of the bug in microarray quantitation
software (to pull an example out of the air) that will result in paper
retractions.
I realize having the source doesn't _cure_ this problem, but it makes
it a lot easier to detect, and might inspire the companies doing the
coding to do a better job of it.
>> The guru thing is correctable; just keep using, and learning, and
>> eventually you _will_ be a guru.
Michael> Yep, but someone's gotta have the time to spend on all this
Michael> learning. OTOH managing a commercial Unix system isn't all
Michael> that much less learning and tinkering.
*nodnod* The nice thing is that some (most?) of the experience
transfers across the different Unices.
john.
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[ John S Jacobs Anderson ]------><URL:mailto:jacobs at genehack.org>
[ Genehack: Not your daddy's weblog ]------><URL:http://genehack.org>
