> My comments about 'novices' refer to the fact that this is > the group of people that I am trying to reach. My personal > motivation for working on Jmol is to provide a web browser > tool so that educators can teach their students.
That's great! But it won't pay the bills unless you can get public funding for it. Either you meet the needs of companies that have money or you feed from the public trough. There is simply no other way to cover development costs, except for sacrificing your own precious free time [as most open-source developers do]. Support & maintentance is a different issue -- you might be able to eek out a living from that via service relationships with schools and institutions, but then when would you have time to write code? > The professionals and researchers have software tools. Actually, most professionals can't afford the software tools that they would like to have. > Professionals pay serious money for a lot of them, so I > assume that they must be happy and well-served. While professionals do pay a lot of money for the commercial products they use, most are not at all happy with what they're getting for their money. > The > corporations do no pay any money to support me or Jmol > (despite my requests), so I assume that they are not interested. Nonsense -- but I know how you feel since was there too. In reality, they haven't paid because you haven't yet delivered a product into their hands that can begin to meet some of their critical needs -- but Jmol is getting close. Once you've done that, and once they realize the value of what you've done, and once you make it dead easy for them to do so, then they'll gladly pay you to continue advancing it. > It seems that the educators (and their students) get nothing > more than a few table scraps. I agree with that, but considering what most of them are willing & able to spend on software, what more can they expect? With PyMOL, we keep students & educators in the loop by engaging them in the design, development, and testing of the code, even when they don't pay for it. In that way, they contribute real value that way in exchange for their free use -- but it's companies that provide the bulk revenue to make this a sustainable business. > But that should be *your* job, and the job of the > professional chemists, not my job. > > I am a computer scientist, not a chemist. > > But the unfortunate fact is, I feel that I have had to learn > a *huge* amount of chemistry, much more than was appropriate. > > Everyone would be better off if there were some serious > chemists working on Jmol. That way I could spend more time on > architecture, packaging, code review, and project management > rather than learning and implementing details within the > Chemistry application space. > > It is incredibly inefficient for me to learn about and try to > understand chemical/biochemical/crystallographic concepts via email. Hmm...sounds like you might enjoy being a member of a multi-person open-source company comprised of individuals having different areas of expertise (chemistry, biology, compsci, and business), with funding from industry and academia as well as from government grants, and with a diverse base of users & customers: from individual students all the way up to multinational corporations. I don't think such a company exists quite yet, but perhaps it will before too long. Cheers, Warren -- Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D. Principal Scientist . DeLano Scientific LLC . 400 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 213 . South San Francisco, CA 94080 . Biz:(650)-872-0942 Tech:(650)-872-0834 . Fax:(650)-872-0273 Cell:(650)-346-1154 . mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
