Public Domain for B-D's old software?

Eric Martz (emartz@microbio.umass.edu)
Thu, 21 Jul 1994 13:51:01 -0500 (EST)

Tom Delohery has renewed the request that B-D release "obsolete" software
source code to the public domain, unsupported. Were B-D or Coulter to do
this, it would be a generous act which would, by assisting the
international flow community, generate much good will for the company which
took this initiative.

I'd like to add to the request list which already includes ConsortVAX, the
vintage 1988 HP Pascal "FACScan Research Software". At the very least,
this would give someone the opportunity to fix some annoying bugs/
limitations of this software on which many of us still depend. (Perhaps
one could inadvertantly return to the acquisition menu without erasing the
data in-memory. Perhaps one could build in a simple means to clock
acquisition use separately from analysis use for billing purposes.)

I'd also like to remind everyone that B-D has placed useful unsupported
software with source code in the public domain in the past. Until 1993,
when WinMDI became available, the 1988 PeCAN (PC Analysis) program was
really quite efficient for doing simple quadrant analysis (and actually
still is). HPPCLINK is still in routine use here and I suppose other
places for transfer of list mode data files from older HP's via the
IEEE-488 GPIB to PC's. Without it, we wouldn't be able to use WinMDI
or MFI!

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Eric Martz, Professor of Immunology emartz@microbio.umass.edu
Dept Microbiology Voice: 413-545-2325 FAX: 413-545-1578
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