On Sat, 7 Sep 2002, [iso-8859-1] Ute Römer wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>Some weekend thoughts on Corpora List discussions -- in reply to Diana
>Santos' recent posting.
>
>I was just wondering, is it really "a waste of time" to discuss -- on an
>email list the purpose of which it is, or ought to be, to exchange ideas on
>certain specific topics and to help people solve corpus linguistic
>problems -- special software tools, their use, and problems you encounter
>while using them? And does it make a difference then whether the tools in
>question are freely available or not? What's wrong with explicitly asking
>for help with a certain program like Sampo Nevalainen did? I actually do not
>very much like the idea of having to think twice before sending queries on
>commercially available corpora and corpus analysis tools to the list and I
>suspect that other list members might feel the same.
...
Dear Ute & al.:
I don't see anything at all wrong with it. Of course, if other
list members want to chime in with comments on their favorite free
program which works even better, then so much the better! We don't
want, of course, to promote piracy at all, but pointing out free (or
cheap) programs that are functionally equivalent is a big help for many
of the list members who may not have big software budgets, helps all of
us to better appreciate what resources there are scattered around and
how to get them, and should be seen as one of the major contributions of
the list in the first place.
Jim
-- James L. Fidelholtz e-mail: jfidel@siu.buap.mx Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje tel.: +(52-2)229-5500 x5705 Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades fax: +(01-2) 229-5681 Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, MÉXICO
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