> Yep. The problem is that there are more people living in those countries > than on rich countries. Not everyone lives in USA. :-) > And the culture cannot be changed by a few software developers that try to > earn for living. >
Agreed. I think in there lies the biggest limitation. My point was, as you say later, you can do both. > > > I believe however that as professor and in an area that would never have > been where is at without free software I can help by letting people k ow > > that for every commericial bioinformatics tool out there, there is a > better open source. > > This is not true. Open Office and Libre Office are not better than MS > Office. > The best OCR programs are commercial. > The best programs which are used to improve the accessibility for the > blind are also commercial. From the accessibility point of view, which is > the most important point for that category of people, MS Windows is the > best OS because it has the best accessibility. > And there may be many other examples... > Neither GIMP is better than photoshop. I would disagree with regards to word and specially to Excel. To me anything is better than those monstrosities. The only reason I still use them is portability to other people, and in science, the vast majority uses office. I process all my data in MySQL and perl and than same it as tab delimted file, so the excel folks can read it. But there isn't an easy way to go from latex to word that I know. I you can't easily put comments on latex formatted files. But as far as bioinformatics go, I challenge any one to show me a proprietary solution that is better than the perl, python and R modules available. > > > As for the challenge of making a living out of it and saying that there > is no other choice, I feel bad if that is true > > Yes there is another choice. To do something else than programming. > In some countries the programmers create open source programs and sell > books, training or other additional services. > In other countries the books are scanned and OCRed and read for free, or > downloaded from torrents, and very few people pay for training, so these > are not a choice. > But isn't it social inequity that drive those behaviours for the most part. I grew up in Brasil and for the longest time and never bought a book or a cd or anything. Why, because the cost makes it not-accessible, and the reason why it is so in the third world is incompetent tax policy making and sheer greed. Again, I think there are middle-points, that are not the 100% encrypted commericial model that can suit these situations. I think that the acedemic licensing model is a great example of middle ground. > > > > Maybe the only solution is in educating the next generations. > > Yes. That is the solution. But it is also a solution for the next > generations of programmers, not for the current one. > But from what I see, the world actually goes in the opposite direction. > > However, I think ignoring the fact that things like perl and Linux are > what they are because of community not individual and therefore should be > treated as so, a product of the community, is wrong. > > I agree. This is why I said that the recommendation is to also create open > source, as a contribution to the community. > But this doesn't mean that the users of an open source language should > never write proprietary applications. > Agreed. My point was trying to say, just because it is hard, does mean you have to go to exclusive commercial route and that maybe compromise between open source and propriety source code that may further the democratization of technology. > > Octavian > > T. -- "Education is not to be used to promote obscurantism." - Theodonius Dobzhansky. "Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario Con él, las palabras que pienso y declaro Madre, amigo, hermano Y luz alumbrando la ruta del alma del que estoy amando Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio" Violeta Parra - Gracias a la Vida Tiago S. F. Hori. PhD. Ocean Science Center-Memorial University of Newfoundland
