REPLY Open Source Simulation Software for SD (SD6804)

[SDMAIL Stefano Armenia - Ateneo]

Posted by  Stefano Armenia - Ateneo <stefano.armenia at uniroma2.it>


Dear Richard, and dear all,

I will answer to the different issues raised in your email by points.


Richard Stevenson wrote:
> First, "free software" is a myth, as most users of poorly constructed
> and badly documented open source software will attest.  There is no

I could not disagree "even" more... As many success OS products are 
there attest, this affirmation is clearly not true, or at least not 
truer than my "hypothesis" (I was just hypothesizing). I just recall 
that the success of an Open Source software most of the times is highly 
dependant on the width of its underlying community, which also mean well 
supported, well constructed, etc... software. Just have a look at the 
MySQL, Apache, or PHP communities just to give a hint on successful Open 
Source Software.

> Second, it is my experience that most SD software suppliers have bent
> over backwards to accommodate academic researchers and students with
> licensing deals and low prices.

I am afraid this has been just a "bad" experience, just refer as an 
example to previous cited tools, but many many more may be found by a 
simple search on the web.

> It is also my experience that there is
> almost no trick that some (by no means all) academics and students won't
> get up to to pirate software.

I agree on this, but the problem is: do we really have a common 
understanding as well as a clear "systemic" view of why this is happening?

> Third, any proposition that a lack of free software is a reason for "the
> submission of poorly documented models" is just absurd.

Mine was just an hypothesis among the various ones, trying to find 
another reason for the "poor submission" issue.
Probably it's not clearly related but it woudl be at my advice worth 
investigating, rather than find an early solution like saying that an 
hypothesis is absurd. An hypothesis must be tested first.

> Jay Forrester's views his in "next 50 years" paper are highly pertinent.
> In particular, he cites two great challenges - better education of
> system dynamics "experts", and using SD as an organising philosophy for
> a new kind of management education.  Those needs are indeed the keys to
> the future of SD.

I surely agree on Jay's view for the next 50 years, but I leave the 
discussion on what has just been said to other researchers surely more 
qualified than me in answering this.

> So let's put away ideas that SD is constrained by the cost of software -
> it is not.

I didn't say that, the basic idea contained in my mail was another one,

I'm somehow of the idea that if at least a sort of an interchange format 
(XML is just an example) for model-files would be out there (which would 
not be hard to do since the common paradigm is the SD theory itself), it 
could be easier to share models and to provide users with a common 
framework which in the long run (according to my vision) would lead to a 
wider use of SD models if compared to other modelling and simulation 
communities, with probably some good effects also in the way we submit 
models.


Stefano Armenia
Posted by  Stefano Armenia - Ateneo <stefano.armenia at uniroma2.it>
posting date  Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:25:08 +0100