[Coin-lpsolver] Re: New branching ideas for CBC

[Paulo J. S. Silva]

> Well, you all know that the community of people with CPLEX licenses is
> quite large, so that restriction shouldn't be such a big one for
> you.  
> 

Dear Irv,

Just to let you know. I am a researcher in the biggest university in
Brazil, University of São Paulo. We don't have, available to our
Computer Science department, a license of CPLEX. I also know that the CS
department of other major University in my State UNICAMP, which is also
very important in Brazil (number 2 or 3), doesn't have a license either.
I can oly be *very* sympathetic to Brandy and Mathew points.

In that sense, XPRESS-MP has an advantage with their Academic program
(for example I know that UNICAMP is a member of their program and my
department benefited from the program for at least two years).

Anyhow, even considering academic programs like the gentle offer from
XPRESS-MP, I believe that a library like OSI, that is agnostic to the
solver, and good code like Clp are a bless. With time a company's policy
can change and I don't feel like putting all my eggs in one basket. The
amount of effort we put in our codes is huge, IMHO it is better to have
more than one way out.

Best,

Paulo
-- 
Paulo José da Silva e Silva 
Professor Assistente do Dep. de Ciência da Computação
(Assistant Professor of the Computer Science Dept.)
Universidade de São Paulo - Brazil

e-mail: rsilva at ime.usp.br           Web: http://www.ime.usp.br/~rsilva

Teoria é o que não entendemos o     (Theory is something we don't)
suficiente para chamar de prática.  (understand well enough to call
practice)