Dear PyMOL Users and Friends,
It is with great excitement and anticipation that I announce a new
phase for PyMOL: Beginning April 3rd, 2003, I will be committed FULL-TIME to
the development, documentation, and support of this Open-Source package through
my limited liability company, DeLano Scientific LLC.
This step is made possible through financial sponsorship received from
a small group of PyMOL users during the past 18 months. Thank you very much
for that. Your backing has given me the courage to launch even in these
uncertain times. Don't let terrorism, recession, war, or epidemics dissuade
you -- you only get one life in which to pursue your dreams!
Fortunately, my five-year relationship with Sunesis Pharmaceuticals
continues on good terms, and the company will remain an active test site for
PyMOL though I will no longer be an employee. All of us owe Sunesis a debt of
gratitude for nurturing the development of this package over the past several
years.
PyMOL now enters a critical time. We absolutely must secure additional
funding in order to sustain our activities. While we hold out hope for a large
influx from big pharma, so far it has not yet materialized. Nevertheless,
because we are starting out small and efficient, we can succeed this year
mainly on grass-roots academic and small-company sponsorship if each of you
takes the initiative within your organization to support PyMOL.
Thus, I urge every user to advocate for purchase of a PyMOL license and
maintenance subscription for their group now that the package will be supported
with rapidly improving documentation, responsive feedback, and regular updates.
If you sponsored the project in 2002, then please consider renewing your
maintenance subscription in 2003.
http://www.pymol.org/funding.html
Though PyMOL will always be unrestricted Open-Source software, DeLano
Scientific will also be rewarding sponsors with extra perks known as "Incentive
Products". These will soon include an expanded manual and protein morphing
capability, and will eventually enable electrostatic calculations, sequence
editing, direct movie output, a molecular force-field, and on-site training.
Please understand that my aim is to keep the package as open as
possible while adopting a reliable strategy for paying the bills. Without
incentives, we find that only about 5% of users contribute. If PyMOL is to
eventually surpass the capabilities of traditional commercial products, we need
to secure sponsorship from a majority of users. Hence this compromise.
More details will follow in coming months. If you wish to know more
about DeLano Scientific and our software philosophy, then please follow this
link:
http://www.delanoscientific.com/about.html
Cheers,
Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D.
war...@delanoscientific.com
