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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

General Questions

• Is stochsim free?

  Stochsim is an open-source software which comes free of charge; you do not have to pay anything to use stochsim.

• What is the license of stochsim?

  Stochsim is an open-source software and licensed under the GNU General Public License. However, some parts of Stochsim, such as third party sources, stay under a different licence. For more information, please read carefully all information shipped the stochsim licence files in the repository or part of a downloaded release.

• Warranty

  Stochsim is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General public License for more details.

• Why did you develop stochsim?

  We developed stochsim as part of a scientific publication about multiple infections during dynamic interactions between bacteria and phages (bacterial viruses). This project required stochastic simulations where reactions either fire at exponentially distributed times or after fixed times, as well as the ability to assign properties in form of double values to individual elements of a species. Since no other stochastic simulator offered this ability and was, at the same time, capable to run simulations with billions of elements of each species, stochsim was born.

• Who developed stochsim?
  

  Moritz Lang

  Stochsim was developed by Moritz Lang during his PostDoc at IST Austria, Austria.

  
  

Bugs and Erros

• General

  We try to reduce the number of bugs and errors as much as possible. However, there exist no complex software products for which it can be guaranteed that they are error-free. If you found a bug, we ask for your help to remove the bug. To do so, please read the corresponding section in the contact page.

• Report a bug

  If you want to report a bug, please visit the page contact for more details.

Platform support

• General

  Stochsim is written in C++ and only uses the C++ standard libraries. It should therefore be possible to compile stochsim for every common operating system/platform. However, due to time restrictions, we only provide compiled versions (releases) of stochsim for Windows. If you are using a different operating system, you have to compile stochsim yourself.

Features / Services

• General Remarks

  We would like that many people are able to use stochsim, for many –even specific– research or even economic proposes. Thus, we are interested to steadily improve the functionality of stochsim. However, please understand that stochsim is free-of-charge and that we do not earn any money with stochsim. Thus, the fulfilment of any feature request or similar are conditioned on that we find time to implement them. Also, try to pose any request as general as possible. Your chances that we implement the requested feature are the higher, the more like the feature can be used by a broad audience.

• Request a Feature / Service

  You are welcome to send us any feature request or ask us for any service you want connected to stochsim (see general remarks). How to contact us we describe in the contact section. However, before requesting a feature, you should ask yourself if you might even be able to include your feature on your own (see below).
  To request a feature it would be nice to include the following information in the request:

  • Describe the feature in as general terms as possible.
  • Describe where you think the feature should be integrated, or how you would like to interact with this feature.
  • Include if you think this feature might be interesting for other users, too, and who might be these users. This can significantly increase the chance that the requested feature is actually implemented by us.
  • If there is another program which already has a similar feature, name it.
  • And, most important, provide us with your contact information in case we might have questions about the request.
• Do It Yourself

  Stochsim is open-source and organized in a modular, extensible way. This allows to simply increase its functionality by editing/adding few source files. You are welcome to clone the stochsim repository and add any feature you need yourself!

• Publish a Feature

  Stochsim is provided free of charge. If you have extended stochsim by a feature which might be usefull for others, too, think about giving back something to the community by publishing this feature.

• Contribute to the Development Process

  Stochsim is not only free, but also open-source. This means that you can download and manipulate the source code of stochsim (for more details, see documentation section). Instead of manipulating Stochsim on your own, it would be better to join the development group of stochsim and help us to prepare the next official release. If you want to join the development team, contact us (see contact page)