Who is ChemZoo relative to ChemSpider? Will it stay free?
Posted by: Antony Williams in VisionCopyright©2007 Antony Williams
A recent blogger identified ChemSpider as being a commercial entity. I’d like to clear that up. Yes, it is. It’s a company….a corporation in fact. Why? Because we have wives and families to take care of. We live in a litigious society and we are protecting our families.  We know that many commercial organizations will not take kindly to what we are trying to do with ChemSpider. In fact, as will be evidenced by some blogs to be posted here in the next few days, some members of the Open Source community don’t seem to support what we’re trying to do.
ChemZoo is a corporation. ChemSpider is free. FREE. There are no charges to use any services. ChemSpider is self-financed. All hardware, software and costs associated with running ChemSpider come from the bank accounts of the ChemSpider team. No venture capital. No sponsorship. No Google Adwords. Will it stay this way?
Fact: ChemSpider is getting hundreds of unique visitors per day. Actually it went over 1000 visitors per day based on a posting at another blog.
Fact: It is performing thousands of transactions and searches per day. In less than one month we have received blessings from a number of users and ire from others. But no press is bad press and our “Google Exposure†has us rank at over 110,000 hits as of today (some do use this as a measure of success)
Fact: We opened ChemSpider based on the PubChem data source. This was declared on the website the day we went live. In less than one month we have taken delivery of close to a million new structures to post on ChemSpider. We do not yet know how many will be unique until de-duplicated. Some of these collaborators have required that we sign contracts …yes, ChemZoo is indeed a business.
So, will ChemSpider always be free? The intention is a resounding yes. However, it is clear we may have to seek sponsorship. Our data collection is growing quickly. We WILL have to add an additional server shortly. No choice really if we don’t want to disappoint the chemistry community. We have had companies approach us about integrating paid services to ChemSpider. That might happen. But, the basic capabilities of ChemSpider, and the layering of tools to encourage the growth of a chemical community around a structure centric database, will remain free for everyone. Unless there is a need to charge to help pay off legal bills in this, our litigious society.
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May 5th, 2007 at 12:54 am
[...] 2) I have done my utmost to explain this in a previous post here. [...]
May 5th, 2007 at 3:50 am
[...] I have done my utmost to explain this in a previous post here. [...]
June 14th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
“No venture capital. No sponsorship. No Google Adwords.”
This is irrelevant. Google Adsense has been added.
June 14th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Sergey, My comments were rhetorical in nature. I went on to comment “…it is clear we may have to seek sponsorship. Our data collection is growing quickly. We WILL have to add an additional server shortly.” And then at http://www.chemspider.com/blog/?p=12 “As it is we made the painful decision today that we have to start some form of advertising. We will be judged on this. And we acknowledge it.”
September 13th, 2007 at 10:41 am
[...] computer software, hardware, ISP fees etc were paid for out of our bank accounts. Yes, we founded a corporation to do [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 2:44 am
[...] we are “commercial”. I dealt with this same comment previously. If you have interest in this please browse it. A later post outlines the present status of the [...]