[Gretl-users] gretl: two or three things you could do!

[Allin Cottrell]

Hello all,

I know, everyone in the academic world is busy: there are classes 
to teach, papers to be written, papers to be refereed, conferences 
to attend, and so on.

I'm subject to all these pressures myself, and I spend just about 
all of my "spare time" coding gretl.  The result is that I'm not 
able to devote time to various things that, I think, would help us 
all ("us" being people who think gretl is of value).  Here are 
three things that I think would be helpful, one of which has 
already been done, and two of which remain to be done.  If you 
feel you could contribute in any of these ways, please do!

1) Writing articles, or putting up websites, that explicate gretl 
for people who haven't heard of it.  This has been done.  For 
example, Tadeusz Kufel has a website that brings gretl to a Polish 
constituency; Talha Yalta, Ryan J. Smith and J. Wilson Mixon Jr. 
have published papers that assess gretl; and Lee Adkins has an 
excellent online guide to econometrics using gretl.

2) A Free/Open-Source Software award for gretl: Why haven't we won 
a prize yet?  The obvious answer is that gretl is a relatively 
specialized piece of software; it's not something that _most_ 
desktop users will have a need for, or _most_ sysadmins.  

But if someone had a a little spare time for research: Who awards 
such things and how are the nominations assessed?  I'm not the one 
to say this, but it seems to me that -- leaving aside the famous 
"LAMP stack" of Linux (kernel), Apache (web server), MySQL 
(database) and PHP (web scripting language) -- gretl is one of the 
best conceived and most functional open-source projects in 
existence.  Of course, this is not just thanks to me and Jack 
Lucchetti -- it's also due to the careful bug reports and detailed 
suggestions submitted by many of you over the years.

So, what about it?  A little recognition in the open-source 
community at large would be morale-booster for everyone working on 
gretl.

3) A gretl conference?  We have people with more than a casual 
interest in gretl in at least half-a-dozen (6) countries.  Is 
there anyone who might be interested in organizing a conference to 
bring us all together?  My thought is that such an event would not 
simply bring _us_ together, but might also form a focal point that 
would bring in other _potentially_ interested people.  For 
example, graduate students with computing expertise!  The 
conference agenda could be broader than gretl: it could be, for 
example, something like "open-source approaches in statistical 
computing".

Any takers?

Allin.

-- 
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University, NC