[sdpd] We are not the target

[Armel Le Bail <armel...@fluo.univ-lemans.fr>]

Hello,

In Scientific Computing World, issue 58, May/June 2001, pages
18-19, Tom Wilkie, new COO of Accelrys (formed from the
merger of MSI, Synopsys, Oxford Molecular and GCG) says :
"Only about 10% of the business will be from academic users".

The fact is that some interesting (for us) ex-MSI products like 
PowderSolve, Cerius2 etc, are hardly affordable for the standard 
academic user. We tend to use some public domain replacement
software. 

Even, sometimes we (academic users) do not understand exactly why 
the top pharmaceutical companies do not use these public domain
software (which they could sponsor for much less money than
the cost of the commercial software - example is the Dupont
Company with ESPOIR).

To us to show that most scientific ideas come from the academic world at
large, even if big bioinformatic software companies can make quite shiny
packages.

We certainly (academic users) have no choice than to continue to produce those
freeware for the academic world (90% of our business) or to become 100% 
dependent.

Best,

Armel Le Bail
http://www.cristal.org/


 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/