Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: A question for FTP users Message-ID: Date: 21 Jan 91 17:58:44 GMT References: <9101190214.AA17249@alanine.phri.nyu.edu> <1991Jan19.035659.9788@news.miami.edu> <1991Jan21.145215.6851@phri.nyu.edu> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 35 The issue of why commercial vendors choose their own format goes way back. A common complaint in the "good old days" was that GenBank was "always changing their format." Commercial vendors did not feel that they could reliably support their users if the format of the data that they were receiving was not consistent. A considerable investment in time, money, and accumulated data has been made in the interim by vendors and the users of their software. Note, however, that when GenBank changed the features table format recently, there was still a lot of controversy despite the fact that many attempts had been made to alert users in advance. Having been on both sides of the fence there is undoubtedly blame to go around everywhere. I do not think that one can allege any kind of commercial conspiracy here, because it also costs the companies a significant amount of money to fiddle with these conversions. IBM may be able to "lock people in" with proprietary products because of their size, but this is not a significant consideration in this rather little arena. When people buy commercial software and pay a not insignificant sum, they expect to get something for their money. I can understand it if, having been burned in the past, most vendors still use their own formats. Remember that GenBank has been based on five year contracts, the second of which will end in another year and 9 months. Each change brings potential uncertainty although it appears that the GenBank format will continue to be produced after the end of the current contract. Whether it is more cost effective for vendors to change formats is a decision which is up to them since each faces their own market conditions with their own set of resources. As you are well aware, the National Center for Biotechnology information is trying to establish another format using ASN.1 to try to develop a new standard for this area. If this is well thought out and well received by the user community, perhaps this will eventually put an end to some of these issues. Until some reliable degree of stability is assured to any format, others will undoubtedly continue to exist.