4 ms·

Eh. Is Richard M. Stallman teaching philosophy of science now or something? Arguably, the rough idea is to discover and prove interesting or useful facts.

• mjn 14y ago
  Yes, but discovering and proving interesting or useful facts requires some degree of transparency and replication. It's at least better, when possible, for a scientist to use apparatus whose functioning they can inspect, and that includes any major software components. That's a bit different from Stallman's focus. Stallman is mainly interested in the freedom of users to modify the software they use (and share those modifications). But for scientific software the real issue is whether scientists can look at how it works. It would be fine for it to be under a "look but don't redistribute" proprietary license.
  • PeterisP 14y ago
    Other things being equal, it really would be better to use a more transparent apparatus. But other things aren't equal, and the productivity difference is order(s) of magniture more important than the transparency of an apparatus that has been successfully used by many others and is believed to give correct results.