Eduardo, I am a member of siesta's development team, but this answer is personal.
As it has been mentioned, there are many reasons for an open software approach in general, and particularly in academic research. As employees of public academic institutions, we are paid to advance science and technology in general, and this can be served best by distributing our codes freely. On the other hand, we are also pressed to find additional funding for our research, and this is the reason why siesta and other academic codes are not fully free. Some follow the open software philosophy strictly, and they are completely free for everybody. Some charge a small amount. And some, like siesta, charge only to private companies. Best wishes, Jose 2012/11/12 Eduardo Gracia <[email protected]> > Hi everyone > > I've been working with Siesta and other codes since my PhD, now I recently > start working in a full experimental research team. They asked me which > software I use, and as expected, they didn’t know about Siesta and other > codes such as Abinit, lammps (mainly free codes), etc. > > Then and interesting question comes, If these codes are good, why are they > free (for academic purpose)? > > Personally, I didn’t ask that before, since for me it has been quiet > natural that Siesta and other available codes are free, and we can also > find support, new version, bug fixes, etc. > > So, right now I'm asking the same question to the developing team, > Why Siesta is free? > > Regards > Eduardo >
