Re: [Gretl-devel] we need defense and/or marketing
On Wed, 11 Nov 2015, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Am 11.11.2015 um 08:58 schrieb Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti:
> On Tue, 10 Nov 2015, oleg_komashko(a)ukr.net wrote:
>
>> Dear all, A citation The following is a list of free open-source
>> software. We do not teach the use of these programs in our courses.
>> We teach using software that you may encounter is the workplace.
>> Support for these packages is limited
I actually agree with the main point of that citation: if you educate
students who are not (all) going to become academics, you also have an
obligation to provide them with marketable human capital. And (for example
because of the network effects that Jack mentioned) gretl is just not very
widespread yet. So in the past I've tried to not use gretl in class
exclusively.
I agree, up to a point. IMO, two qualifications need to be made: (i) at a
university level, nobody should teach econometrics with a "don't ask why,
just do this" attitude; if you do, you're giving your students a very bad
product: you're giving them the illusion of knowing, while in fact they're
just parroting. If econometrics is taught the right way, the package you
use doesn't make a real difference, you should be able to switch from one
to another with minimal difficulty. (ii) I think that PUBLIC universities
(like mine) have a MORAL obligation to give preference to
free-as-in-speech software whenever possible. I think the reasons are
obvious for anybody on gretl-devel and I'll refrain from stating them
here.
So the point is: I think the public is right that they want to have a
big
entity behind the software. I don't really think they necessarily mean
"company", a big community is also ok; see the case of R and Python which
have been adopted widely in recent years.
To be fair, R is also among the packages mentioned in the page that Oleh
linked. Things are a little more subtle than that.
It is a fundamental problem that the gretl community is too small.
However, I
think the right actions to correct that have been taken already, most notably
the function package area.
...
> Again, advocacy is ok, but only works up to a point. Time is on our side.
>
I also think that apart from continuing the work there is not much else to be
done.
One thing: acknowledge explicitly the use of gretl whenever possible. It's
amazing how many people out there use gretl but would be embarassed to
admit they do. "Gretl pride" is very, very helpful.
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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