Free visualization software

[elson at poboxes.com]

In article <slrn7sipd9.oep.fl_aggie at thepentagon.com>,
  fl_aggie at thepentagon.com (I R A Darth Aggie) wrote:
> On 29 Aug 1999 06:55:49 PDT, Spamfree
<Spamfree at DELETETHIS.spamfree.net>, in
> <7qbe55$91l at journal.concentric.net> wrote:
>
> + Beautiful.  Yet more commercial spam.
>
> Really? I thought it was free. Am I mistaken? have you filed a
complaint
> regarding misuse of a government computer to post commercial ads? do
you
> know what you speak of?
>
> I'm sorry, but that wasn't spam by any known metric.




>
> + But then again - what would you expect from a government employee?
>
> He took time from his schedule to alert us to a free,
meteorologically-
> oriented visualization package. It is an on-topic post for this group.
>
> Remain calm.
>
> James
>
> --
> Consulting Minister for Consultants, DNRC
> The Bill of Rights is paid in Responsibilities - Jean McGuire
> To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
> <url:http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/FAQs/cgi/idiots-guide.html>
>

Just thought I'd make a couple of comments. This is a response to many
of the posts, not just this one:

1) Our motivation is to make useful software for the scientific
community and the public. Our sponsors believe that software developed
with government funding should be provided at the lowest possible cost
to the public. We are able to do it for free.

2) There are many areas where government and the commercial sector
compete. Is government funding of social security unfair competition to
private pension plans? I though government agencies were lumbering
inefficient beasts. It ought to be easy for small startup companies to
run circles around the government labs.

3)We also compete for funding in the (often irrational) shrinking world
of government funding. In the commercial sector, customers vote with
their dollars. In our world, people take our software and disappear. It
is extremely difficult to convince our sponsors that we are perfoming a
useful function since we don't often hear from people who have
downloaded and used our software. If you visit our website, you'll see
we are genuinely interested in user input, both positive and negative.

-Just another anonymous software developer at a dotgov.


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