Re: Anonymous downloads for NCL/NCARG, PyNIO and PyNGL?

From: Ryan Pavlick <ryan.pavlick_at_nyahnyahspammersnyahnyah>
Date: Wed Oct 13 2010 - 10:51:14 MDT

Would it be possible to put a simple registration step in a packaged
installation? Would this satisfy the NSF program managers?

It could ask at the command line for a name, e-mail address, and
company/institution name. And then send this data by e-mail or some
other method to the NCL developers at NCAR.

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 12:35 AM, Charlie Sharpsteen
<source@sharpsteen.net> wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Charlie Sharpsteen <chuck@sharpsteen.net>
> Date: Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 3:33 PM
> Subject: Re: Anonymous downloads for NCL/NCARG, PyNIO and PyNGL?
> To: Mary Haley <haley@ucar.edu>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Mary Haley <haley@ucar.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Charlie,
>>
>> I agree that this download process is a bit of a pain.
>>
>> The reason why we have to do it this way is because we have to be able to report
>> to NSF (our main funders) why we should be able to continue developing the
>> software. Anonymous metrics don't carry nearly as much weight as being able to
>> indicate what types of sites (universities, research companies, weather bureaus,
>> government sites, etc) are downloading the software, and how many of these
>> downloads are actually from unique users. Being able to say that X number of users
>> from Y countries is also very valuable to NSF. We have to prove that NCL is having
>> an impact on science, and that is one way of doing it.
>>
>> There are some folks who have provided packaged NCL binaries for LINUX systems,
>> and we just quietly look the other way. :-)
>>
>> --Mary
>
> Hi Mary,
>
> I was afraid this might be the answer.  I find it very unfortunate
> that the NSF heavily weights such detailed download statistics as the
> collection of such statistics can drive both users and developers away
> from the software.
>
>
> I was moved to start this discussion by a use case that came up in a
> software project I am currently working on.  One of my teammates
> needed to access GRIB files from Python in order to extract data.  He
> tried using the Python bindings to GDAL and PyNIO and preferred PyNIO.
>  However, the software we are making has to be delivered to a client
> and one of the questions we will have to answer is "What do I need to
> do to get this running on my machine?"
>
> If I can say something along the lines of:
>
>   "Simply run `<package manager> install gdal` and you're ready to rock"
>
> Then the client is happy.  However, if my answer is:
>
>    "Well, first you have to go to earthsystemgrid.org, then you have
> to register, then you have to..."
>
> Things don't go so smoothly and I spend the next weeks answering
> nervious emails from the client asking why we are using open source,
> why Python, why isn't it easier, etc.  So the end result is that we
> may choose to use GDAL over PyNIO, even though we would much rather
> use PyNIO, just because the deployment process will have less steps
> for the end user.
>
>
> As a developer, I face a different dilemma.  I am perfectly willing to
> put in the time to make NCL available as a turnkey installation on the
> OS X operating system thus potentially increasing the number of active
> users.  However, doing so would require setting up a mirror to serve
> the source code -- which is no problem -- but this could potentially
> decrease the number of users who retrieve it from earthsystemgrid.org.
>  Thus I am in the unfortunate position of having to ask the question
> "would donating my time and energy to increasing the availability and
> usability of this software end up causing more harm than good?"
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-- 
------------------------------------------
Ryan Pavlick
Doctoral Student
Biospheric Theory and Modellling Group
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
mail: P.O. Box 10 01 64, D-07701 Jena, Germany
email: rpavlick@bgc-jena.mpg.de
phone: +49.36.41.57.6262
web: http://gaia.mpg.de
------------------------------------------
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Received on Wed Oct 13 10:51:45 2010

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