License Controversy
In the past, Gaussian, Inc. has attracted controversy for its licensing terms that stipulate that researchers who develop competing software packages are not permitted to use the software. Some scientists consider these terms overly restrictive. The anonymous group bannedbygaussian.org has published a list of scientists whom it claims are not permitted to use GAUSSIAN software. These assertions were repeated by Jim Giles in 2004 in Nature. The controversy was also noted in 1999 by Chemical and Engineering News (repeated without additional content in 2004), and in 2000, the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists Scientific Board held a referendum of its executive board members on this issue with a majority (23 of 28) approving the resolution opposing the restrictive licenses.
Gaussian corporation disputes the accuracy of these descriptions of its policy and actions, noting that all of the listed institutions do in fact have licenses for everyone but directly competing researchers. They also claim that not licensing competitors is in fact standard practice in the software industry. Finally, they note that few commercial software packages in computational chemistry offer source code to anyone at any price.
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