Drs. Harrell and O'Keefe,
Although it is at odds with your beliefs, University staff working on licensing and technology transfer believe that a patent may be a vehicle to achieve a wide use. The audience of the proposed methods would be the end users who are not sophisticated programmers and, therefore, the hope is that it would be available in widely used software which is not the case of the high end software (e.g., R). The proposed graph of 2D equiponderant display of two predictors is just a display procedure, not an inferential tool. The sophisticated analyst has little or no need for the proposed method. It does overcome the pitfalls of 3D bar graphs and, therefore, has the potential of improving the way we communicate our findings. Needless to say, were the predictions of Dr. Harrell to be on target, we will change course as the staff working on the licensing have planned from the start.
Perhaps I can add some personal experience, as opposed to "belief".
After Robert Gentleman and I had made some initial progress in implementing R, we had to make some decisions about what we would do with it. We looked at a number of options ranging from "something commercial" to "free software". After some research, personal introspection and prompting from others (hi Martin :-) we decided to release under GPL.
For me personally this turned out to be far harder than I thought it would be. My institution has a particularly diabolical policy on intellectual property, especially on software. While we could have quietly released the software and just said "oops" later on, I chose to get approval for free release of my work. This took a number of years, several threats of resignation and a couple of salary cuts.
The reason I mention this is not as a part of a personal campaign for sainthood, but rather because it has utimately turned out to have been far more than worth the effort. The effect of making R free has been see it picked up and vastly improved and extended by a very talented group of researchers. We've now reached a point which Robert and I and other early R adopters and contributors couldn't have anticipated in our wildest imaginings. It's truly amazing to see this software being used for all sorts of cool things. What we are seeing represents the best of what being an academic is all about - the free exchange of ideas with researchers collaborating and building on each other's work.
On the other hand, I'm currently writing what will possibly become a book on visualization and graphics (publication mechanism uncertain). The techniques discussed in the book are implemented in a certain dialog of a particular computer language developed at Bell Labs. I intend to include code libraries for all the graphical techniques discussed. The fact that you have sought to patent your idea means that, whatever its merits, it's pointless for me to even mention it because I can't distribute code for it.
I'm sure the licensing gnomes at your institution have expounded on how patenting will help achieve wider use, but in reality they are simply thinking "revenue stream". The likely real effect of of constraining access to your work in this way will be to have it sink into obscurity. Take it from one who's been there, the payoff from free dissemination is much higher.
-- Ross Ihaka Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Statistics Phone: (64-9) 373-7599 x 85054 University of Auckland Fax: (64-9) 373-7018 Private Bag 92019, Auckland New Zealand
______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
