Scientific Software Preamble

Updated 9/14/99

Scientist should have, in addition to the tools necessary for their research, total access to the theories, methods, and philosophy upon which those tools were made. In the world of proprietary software, they are denied much of this knowledge and forced to work with the equivalent of a black box. In the realm of Free Software, they are able to dissect, examine, modify, and most importantly, learn from the immensely valuable craftsmanship of the programmer/programmers. There is probably no other profession which needs full disclosure more than the research community, and this is why the software contained herein is released and distributed under the GNU license.

The desire of the writer/writers is that you will be able to maximize its usefulness to your work and maybe even contribute to its evolution in becoming more versatile, efficient, and accurate. But whether you choose simply to use it as is or input your vision to the product, we hope that this software inspires you to share your knowledge freely and enthusiastically in the ideal spirit of science.

You may copy and distribute this document as long as you do not alter it.

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