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

[Lucy]

On 8 February 2010 17:46, Robert Burrell Donkin
<address@hidden> wrote:
> 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.

Actually, this government has positively forced scientists to work in
secret. I agree with a lot of this article, scientists should free
their computer programs, but very often the University won't allow
them, as the government is insisting that they attempt to monetise any
work done. This means keeping it secret for future patent applications
and to spin off companies to make money from the software (regardless
of public good).

> 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.

I'd like to see this 'academic research', do you have a link? As far
as I was aware, all the independent research done suggested the
opposite and that the DEB is a result of pressure from a dying
industry.

>> 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.

One thing that has been missed so far, is that free software does play
a huge role in science/academia. A huge number of scientists use and
contribute to free software projects already, but outside forces (the
Universities and external companies (e.g the pharmaceuticals)) prevent
them from doing more.