Rick Westerman <westerm at purdue.edu> wrote:
> Disclaimer: While I have contributed a program ("PrettyBox") to the EGCG
> package I am not at all connected with them. I am not an EGCG software
> tester nor do I know the "inside scoop" about the package. Like many of
> the rest of you I have been awaiting the arrival of EGCG version 9 and
> have been wondering about the delay.
> Peter Rice's EGCG page (http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Software/EGCG/) contains
> a rather pessimistic view of the EGCG project. Some key phrases:
> ... this will be the final release ...
> ... available some time early in 1998 ... (of course they said this in
> 1997 as well)
> ... OBSOLETE and will not be further developed ...
> ... Supported platforms will be limited ...
> ... there are no plans to support [other platforms] in the future ...
> Despite Steve Smith's (R&D Manager of GCG) assurances that GCG wishes to
> support the EGCG community, I find the above rather disturbing.
> Especially since my platform (AlphaVMS) is not one of the supported
> ones. I guess I'll have to take GCG's offer of:
> ... willing to provide platform access if needed to compile EGCG on all
> supported platforms ...
> But this is just a short term solution. Since it appears that EGCG can
> not be distributed in source form and since Peter Rice, et. al. will not
> be allowed to distribute source code, then it seems to me that we might
> as well write off EGCG in the future. Peter won't work on it any more
> and neither can the rest of us.
> In my opinion this wouldn't be nearly as bad if GCG people would add the
> EGCG improvements and de-novo programs to the GCG package. But they
> don't seem to be inclined to do so.
> BTW: If it isn't obvious, I am not complaining about Peter nor the rest
> of the EGCG staff. They have my highest regard for creating and
> maintaining (the hardest part!) this software.
Well, in fairness to GCG I was always somewhat surprised that they
continued to distribute the source code; there are some unscupulous
people out there! (Not the majority of us fortunately).
As someone who is heavily involved in helping to set up a site with
sequence analysis software, nothing else touches GCG in terms of 'bang
for your buck', felxibility or ability, with just a few licenses of a
proprietory Mac based software costing *far* more than the entire
Wisconsin package. Whilst I would have very much liked to have included
the EGCG package (the reason for my original post) I by no means consider
it essential for the vast majority of users at my site (and I suspect at
many other sites). Unless I missed something in the post from GCG, they
said they are more than happy to help people with a GCG license to get
EGCG to their platform; sounds like they couldn't be more accommodating.
It also sounds like EGCG is terminating soon; maybe GCG could take it
over.
