Hugh Merz wrote:
>
> As well as this many research codes are still closed, in that they are
> owned by commercial entities, government agencies and academics who are
> unwilling to share source due to the amount of time (money) invested in
> them. Having an open source repository would help to reduce overlap in
> development (I bet many graduate students have effectively written the
> same program!) and provide incentive for groups who are fearful of losing
> their edge to take the lead and put their code out there. Then again
> maybe I'm living in a naive fantasy world.
Ouch! Ouch! Academics are, in my experience, very happy to share
their code. Often, believe it or not, they simply don't think
that they are doing anything of general interest in the coding
area, and don't bother to make a big deal out of what they consider
only a means to an end.
As you syggest, many grad students and post-docs reproduce the
work of others endlessly from scratch, but that is not necessarily
a bad thing ;^)
Anyway, I am going way off topic. End of rant.
--
Phil Ehrens <pehrens_at_[hidden]>| Fun stuff:
The LIGO Laboratory, MS 18-34 | http://www.ralphmag.org
California Institute of Technology | http://www.yellow5.com
1200 East California Blvd. | http://www.total.net/~fishnet/
Pasadena, CA 91125 USA | http://slashdot.org
Phone:(626)395-8518 Fax:(626)793-9744 | http://kame56.homepage.com
|