--- David Airey <[email protected]> wrote:
> Maybe I understand. As far as I know, nothing is stopping you from
> building an application that uses Stata, as long as you and your
> clients have the right licenses, right? So, theoretically, you could
> build a nice front end to some process, and charge for it. Right? In
> fact I think there is some precedent to this for a panel data tool
> (PanelWhiz??).
PanelWhiz can do that relatively easily because the "price" is a
donation to UNICEF for which people can have a sympathie. If you want
to do this commercially there are some practical problems.
If your program is based on published procedures than everybody can
just make a free program that does the same thing (or more). If it is
not based on published procedures no one is going to trust/buy it.
Users makeing a free version is particularly a danger when you are
thinking of a relatively small command and someone thinks that you are
charging too much, or taking too long to fix a bug, or not implement a
feature request. So you'd have to do a lot of work for relatively
little gain.
-- Maarten
-----------------------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Department of Social Research Methodology
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
visiting address:
Buitenveldertselaan 3 (Metropolitan), room Z434
+31 20 5986715
http://home.fsw.vu.nl/m.buis/
-----------------------------------------
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