Frankly, I am disappointed at the turn this thread has taken and, from
an offlist discussion, know it has caused Ashim considerable personal
distress. By way of disclosure, I am the person who has been working
with Ashim on a problem of mutual interest. Namely, the creation of
customized HTML tables from program output. I have a similar need in
my work and so there was a natural convergence of interest. The
nature of Ashim's problem gave me an opportunity to work with him
towards my goal of making my -htmltab- program more generalizable.
He works for a company that is using Stata analysis of stock trades in
an attempt to gain an industry advantage. I understood and accepted
the fact that he could not send me his program in its entirety nor the
raw data upon which it acts. However, I have be working on an excerpt
that deals with the results display. One challenge, though, is the
recreation of the local macro environment that exists at the end of
the proprietary code so that my program can run with both the
resultant dataset and it's "macro milieu." Hence Ashim's request to
be able to save and recreate local macros.
The fact that Ashim has proprietary code upstream of the section of
interest is an absolute red herring, in my opinion. He is being paid
for a job where he must understand financial data and has developed
code that analyzes trading patterns to give his company a competitive
edge. This code is not his to share. However, he has not asked for
help specifically with his proprietary code. He has asked questions
that, while being somewhat exotic compared with more mainstream Stata
enquiries, do have general application and interest.
He is working on a problem where he desires to produce colour-coded
output tables. This inquiry started in the thread "How do you print
colourful SMCL files" [
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-12/msg00964.html ] which
is how I got involved. I don't believe this is a unique or
proprietary request. It also highlights specific limitations in
Stata's capabilities of producing printable colour-coded output.
While Stata's viewer is colour-capable, it's printing translation is
strictly B&W. This has lead Ashim and myself to investigate an
alternate display format in which significant control of colour-coded
output is possible, namely through direct writing of HTML table code.
I'd like to address this issue of "non-symmetry." Because Ashim works
in a for-profit environment are his requests for help somehow tainted?
Should he be required to contract for services from a willing list
member? (I recognize Nick was just twigging Ashim a bit with the
payment comment, but there is a "truth said in jest" element here) Is
he leaching from the collective commons and giving nothing in return?
(Ashim, in fact, has made contributions in other threads) I have a
foot in both the government and academic worlds so I do feel I have
some insights worth sharing here. I'm also the administrator of an
web development on-line forum (and trust me, Statalist is sooo tame in
comparison).
Very few of us are independently wealthy and play with Stata simply to
stave off perpetual ennui. We use it because we have a job to do.
Jobs, hopefully, for which we are paid or achieve some personal
advantage. If we are students, we use it for coursework or analysis
for our dissertations which open the doors to our future gainful
employment. If we are academics we use it in teaching or in our own
research. Academic recognition and winning competitive grants to
further our personal research goals are the currency in which we
trade. Persons in government or private industry may be paid directly
for their programming activities. In each case, however, we are all
working with Stata for some form of personal gain, we are working for
someone, even if that someone is effectively ourselves. I can't see
how that concept is offensive.
Regarding the concept of openness and sharing. I believe in the
collective commons and in online forums and lists in which people with
skill and insight contribute their time and effort to help solve
problems and develop the abilities of other participants. Some people
only give. Some people only take. Most do both. Personally, I find
Sudoku boring and find working on Statalist problems more educational
and rewarding and rarely do I find a situation where providing a
response doesn't increase my own insight - so by giving, I gain as
well. At an institutional level, Harvard has made a continuing
contribution to the commons by providing hosting of Statalist for
free. It has done so in a spirit of altruism based on academic ideals
of boundaryless sharing of knowledge. Not all people can live and
work within that paradigm at all times. For example, academic
researchers are frequently unwilling to share their data or methods
with others until they have gotten their own papers published and
recognition for their work. "Freely available" in this context is
often painted in shades of grey and researchers often work in an
environment where the concepts of competitive advantage and
intellectual property play a part - this is academic realpolitik.
So here is the crux: I think the Statalist collective needs to address
the following questions:
1) Can persons working for private for-profit companies that may be
developing proprietary algorithms ask for help on Statalist?
2) Should work by recipients of Statalist help be considered part of
the commons if it contains a solution derived from the commons?
Basically a Stata "General Public License" [ http://gplv3.fsf.org/ ]
clause.
I think this is worthy of some thoughtful debate.
David Elliott, MD, MSc
Medical Advisor & Epidemiologist to the CIO
Nova Scotia Department of Health
Halifax, NS
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