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It alleviates some of the concerns about black boxes, but it doesn't really help with reproducibility, as other people who don't have access to the code will no
by aflag 8y ago
It alleviates some of the concerns about black boxes, but it doesn't really help with reproducibility, as other people who don't have access to the code will not be able to reproduce the results easily. That is, they won't be able to download the original source and fully understand what's happening.
- philipkglass 8y agoThat's true, and it is a reason that free software with a public VCS history is really the gold standard. I've worked with enough non-commercial but restrictively licensed academic software that I'm willing to forgive commercial vendors for similar transgressions, so long as there is full source available to licensees. Though I admittedly steer clear of restrictively licensed code when at all possible now. I gave up on GAMESS and switched to really open quantum chemistry software because I tired of not having any revision history in the source tarballs, and of having to re-agree to the license every time I wanted an updated version. Also because I want to build software that can be installed in a fully scripted headless manner, and a "fill out the license agreement" step precludes that.