Re: Enhancements that users like

[John Darrington]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 12:02:01PM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
     Hello,
     
     I'm a PSPP newby and will be giving a demo of PSPP to a group of 
     experienced SPSS users soon.
     I understand that many features that are envisioned for PSPP have not been 
     implemented yet, but what are some features that people view as 
     enhancements over SPSS within in PSPP that you as a user like?
     
     Urban Landreman
     
As no one else has replied to this, I'll give it a go.

A number of people have said they prefer the way PSPP presents the options for
text data importing.   Multi-platform portability is also something people have
commented on - is there a (modern) version of SPSS that'll run on BSD for 
example?
A few people are using, or have used the Postgres import feature, which so far 
as
I'm aware cannot be done with SPSS except through ODBC, which looses some of 
the 
meta-data.
Cost, of course, is probably the most often cited advantage.

Not to mention, that :

* In contrast to SPSS, PSPP allows (and encourages) its implementation of the 
  stastistics to be independently reviewed for accuracy, numerical stability, 
  and rigour;

* PSPP's licence lasts forever, compared to SPSS's 6 months;

* PSPP's licence permits you to make unlimited copies.  SPSS allows a single 
copy only;

* If something is found to be lacking from PSPP, a user is welcome to improve 
upon
  it, either by doing the work themselves or by contracting another to do it 
for them.
  It's then possible, but not required, to contribute those improvements back 
to the 
  community.  The Perl interface is an example of an enhancement which arose 
this way;


J'

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