I'm proposing that we add the following item to the FAQ on the web page. Any comments?
<h2>Why don't you merge PSPP with <a href="http://www.r-project.org";>R</a>, <a href="http://gretl.sourceforge.net";>GRETL</a>, <a href="http://www.octave.org";>Octave</a> ... <my favourite program>?</h2> <p>This is unlikely to happen for several reasons:</p> <ul> <li>PSPP has different goals to these other programs. PSPP is intended to be a <a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">Free</a> version of SPSS, and fully compatible with it, whereas GRETL (for example) provides its own language and structure.</li> <li>It's probably harder than you think. Merging two programs which have been developed independently is rarely trivial.</li> <li>PSPP has several technical advantages over its counterparts which we don't wish to loose. Notably PSPP is very efficient at processing extremely large datasets.</li> <li>Many of these other programs have numerous authors, each holding copyright on their respective parts. By contrast, the copyright in PSPP is help by one entitity (the Free Software Foundation), which makes for easier copyright tracking and enforcement. Merging with another program would mean loosing this advantage, or needing to ask scores of authors to re-assign their copyright. This would be neither practical nor polite.</li> </ul> <p>However, we certainly want to provide features which will make PSPP easier to interact with other programs. If you want an import/export filter or some other feature to help PSPP complement your favourite program, then please talk to us about it.</p> -- PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3 fingerprint = 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285 A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3 See http://pgp.mit.edu or any PGP keyserver for public key.
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