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Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Good Scientists Should release their code


From: Robert Burrell Donkin
Subject: Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Good Scientists Should release their code
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 17:46:05 +0000

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 7:08 AM, Luke Taylor <address@hidden> wrote:
> This article made me think of Free Software
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/05/science-climate-emails-code-release

data privacy ensures that evidence-based policy making is
incontrovertible. the politicians fund academics to work in secret and
the academics provide the justification for new policy.

the same process is used to justify making your moral rights to your
novel creative works contingent on a politician's whim, and your right
to access the internet and to speak on it will be dependent on the
approval of a sufficiently independent third party. the Digital
Economy Bill is based on academic research that suggests that the film
and music sector is more important to the UK economy than either
information technology or financial services. the data backing this
claim is secret and cannot be challenged.

> Obviously just being able to look at somebody's source code is not
> sufficient for it to qualify as "Free Software" but it is nice that people
> are starting to talk more about openness in science/software, if only for
> practical reasons.

+1

IMHO openness is necessary but not sufficient for freedom

(why is it open/ness but free/dom - and should it be liber/ness or liber/dom?)

but that's the point - the movement is about much more than just
software. it's about inducing wider societal change. for example, FOSS
techniques inspire and inform projects like
http://www.literacybridge.org/.

with a big enough lever, anyone can change the world

- robert




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