Le Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 07:30:57PM +0200, Steffen Moeller a écrit : > Stefano, would you agree to that? We could also add a note to the startup of > the > application to show that text and optionally show this only upon the first > invocation of > autodock/autogrid.
Dear all, I think that the problem we are trying to solve is not limited to autodock/autogrid: we need an efficient way to tell our users how to support the software they use. This covers the most simple examples like direct financial support for general purpose application (the famous PayPal buttons), the case of AutoDock/AutoGrid that need to evaluate the size of their user base, and the case of other software that collect user feedback for their grant renewals (EMBOSS some time ago, TM4 this year, …) We definitely can dedicate a page on our web site, that lists the software whose existence is tied to a proper acknowledgement of their use. We can also keep an URL to the software's web page that contains instructions on how to support it. Lastly, if there is a volunteer to write an ad-hoc program, we could provide to our users an automated way to search for the recently used applications on their software, that need support. I think that the current solutions of displaying Debian-specific messages at installation or startup time are potential source of bugs or information loss, for instance in cases where interactivity is limited (clusters, computer clouds, installations performed by a third person…). It seems that for AutoDock, relevant information is in the download area: http://autodock.scripps.edu/downloads/autodock-registration Stefano, do you think that you could make a more general page about how to support AutoDock? I wonder if the users will not miss the point if they already installed our package but are lead to a pre-download page. As a side note, maybe “support” is not a well-chosen keyword, since there can be ambiguity about who supports who. But I am not a native speaker, so I do not know what else to use. Or maybe we can keep all the information in the same place and display in a “Get/Give” manner? Lastly, we have discussed in the past how to indicate proper bibliographic information to our users. The final goal is the same: help the software developers to reveive the acknowledgement they desserve. Maybe the problems can be solved by the same technical solution. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Debian Med packaging team, http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-med-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
