Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.BIO.NET (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: GenBank software Message-ID: Date: 9 Aug 90 18:25:52 GMT References: <9008081410.AA02507@alw.nih.gov> <6948.26c115fd@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 26 > There is nothing morally wrong in distributing a program and saying that it > is being provided as an example to aid development, and that it is > distributed 'as-is'. This eliminates the support issue. If people have > questions, they can post them to this, or some other list, for > resolution. I guess there is one more item to attend to ... "Support" means far more than just answering the phone. It also means updating the code so that it continues to serve as an example if the databank format changes. We are confronting this issue right now for Fickett's code which generates GenPept. Any additional code such as a features table parser is subject to similar revisions. We could be nice guys and undertake these additional revisions as volunteer work, but then this would raise problems if other work to which we are currently committed did not get done. As Ross is aware through our collaboration on bionet.molbio.genbank.updates, we do take on these kinds of tasks but have to draw a line somewhere. This job is too big for us to bite off right now. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank On-line Service Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net