Re: It costs how much?!!?!

[Paul van Delst <pvandelst(at)ncep.noaa.gov>]

Bill wrote:
> 
> Nick Bower <bowern@ses.curtin.edu.au> wrote:
> > Bill - if you're a linux user, you may try PyDL (plug).
> >
> > http://nickbower.com/computer/pydl/
> 
> This looked very promising until I found that the library (DSLIN) you
> built all the graphics around is propriatary and without source.  Free
> for linux (yes) but the binary is built for your system (i.e. me with
> solaris x86 and linuxPPC machines is out of luck) ... too bad, like I
> said, it looked very promising.  There is no way you can build around a
> GNU graphics library?

Well, Nick? Get on to it! :o) Considering the future Dr. Bower put PYDL together in about
a month (or less) while writing his thesis, it would probably be easy for him to do
this... :o)

> One final note, to those who commented about RSI not being interested in
> marketing or selling to graduate students...  That is a very poor
> marketing practice!  People are creatures of habit.  If you get all of
> the physics graduate students using IDL, then you will have 90% of them
> going out to industry and purchasing IDL.  On the contrary, why on earth
> would I go out and buy IDL in my new job if I had never used it and
> wasn't familiar with it?  We have a matlab licesnse available at school
> and I have switched to it... the license is much more flexable and the
> people at MathWorks are quite keen to have graduate students using thier
> products (i.e. personal use student licenses of non-crippled software
> are not $1000 CDN).

Oh man, have I seen that before. Back where I used to work, every student workstation had
Matlab on it and now some of those students are working there. And guess what they use?
Unfortunately, Matlab has become more of a crutch than a tool for building/prototyping
production software. Oh well. (That's not to say the same thing couldn't happen with
non-judicious use of IDL).

It seems - to me at least - that the licensing terms for IDL site licenses change often
enough to elicite sighs of frustration from those who oversee then. The TC (tech
computing) people back at the old job are now encouraging people to switch to (or start
with) Matlab because they've had jack of dealing with IDL licensing (e.g. I asked if my
laptop IDL 5.4 license was available and was asked "When you going to change to Matlab. 
It seems to be all the rage." and then told "We just ordered a pretty good package for
matlab.  We were able to purchase a department license, and a group of offsite licenses.")
It seems Mathworks provides more flexible alternatives that allows the TC crowd to do TC
stuff rather than chase around who's got what license and is it covered under this or that
site agreement.

Sheesh.

Morning winge over. Sorry. Off for coffee.....

paulv

-- 
Paul van Delst           Ph:  (301) 763-8000 x7274
CIMSS @ NOAA/NCEP        Fax: (301) 763-8545
Rm.207, 5200 Auth Rd.    Email: pvandelst@ncep.noaa.gov
Camp Springs MD 20746