Category: Open Source

from the working-examples dept.
A pair of articles in the New York Times profile the Los Alamos electronic archive, an electronic, Web-based archive centered at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The archive provides a venerable example of the sort of free, open source library of scientific papers that has recently been covered here on nanodot (see posts from 13 April and 25 April). As the main NYT article ("Web Archive Opens a New Realm of Research", by James Glanz, 1 May 2001) notes, the archive was founded 10 years ago by Los Alamos particle theorist Dr. Paul Ginsparg. According to the report, The archive is transforming the quality of scientific research at institutions around the world that are geographically isolated and, in many cases, small and financially precarious. Besides spreading new ideas and concepts, the archive has encouraged multinational collaboration.
The archive is somewhat limited in scope, focusing primarily on disciplines in the physical sciences, including astronomy, astrophysics, condensed matter physics and particle physics. But in the areas covered, virtually all important developments find their way to the archive. One researcher described the archive as so influential that he is sure most citations of papers written in his institute refer to the archive number rather than to the published version in the journal.

An accompanying sidebar ('The Archives Are More Democratic') presents the views of 21 scientists outside the United States responded to a reporter's questions about the archive.

Note: access to the NYT site is free, but requires registration.

from the seeking-the-source dept.
The proposal for the open Public Libary of Science continues to attract attention. alison writes "An extensive Scientific American article describes the proposal to publish the contents of all scientific journals on-line for free." The SA article also has links to debate over the proposal in Science, Nature, and other science journals.

For additional details, see the nanodot post from 13 April 2001.

from the Out-in-the-Open dept.

Thanks to coverage in Salon.com, and discussion on Slashdot.org — Foresightís new project to protect open source from patents — has been announced a bit ahead of schedule.

The Salon article ("Patents are your friends," by Damien Cave; 21 March 2001) sums things up pretty well:
"The Foresight Institute, a nonprofit nanotechnology think tank, will announce later this month that it is forming an alliance with IP.com, a Rochester, N.Y., start-up dedicated to protecting intellectual property through the publication of new ideas. Together . . . the pair will give open-source programmers and projects the chance to work within the patent system even as they strive to overturn it."

Read more for details . . .

from the depends-how-you-define-innovation dept.
Foresight Director of Communications Tanya Jones writes "In an article on CNET (also seen on Slashdot), Microsoft executive Jim Allchin is quoted as saying that: 'freely distributed software code such as rival Linux could stifle innovation and that legislators need to understand the threat.' Has Microsoft neglected to consider that Open Source is a voluntary movement and that some intellectual property cannot be regulated (like the joys of building something cool) or perhaps this is just another attempt to stifle competition." CP: You have to admire that company's chutzpah, if not their products.

from the tools-for-design-ahead dept.

Nikodem Kuznik wrote in about his Linux4Chemistry website. The goal of this website is to provide the most up-to-date links to the chemical software running on linux. I hope it will be helpful to you. You are very welcome to send me your comments, new URLs and so on. Nikodem Kuznik"

Most (79%) of the 259 packages on this page of the WWW Virtual Library are listed as available without charge, at least for academic use, though the site doesn't specify which are under the GPL or other Free or Open Source licenses. The bottom of the page lists links to other chemistry software resources.

from the cool-tools-for-molecules dept.
Senior Associate BryanBruns writes "On the NanoCAD mailing list, Tim Freeman has announced the release of Fungimol 0.4. 'Fungimol is a extensible system that allows one to design atomic-scale objects. It's written in C++, and presently runs only under Linux.' "Senior Associate Peter McCluskey is also contributing to this project. Read More for the full announcement.