[libreplanet-discuss] Are proprietary software and science compatible?

[Fabio Pesari]

Some scientists go to great lengths to make sure their experiments are
reproducible and can be peer reviewed, but then often use proprietary
programs to achieve their results.

It seems a bit contradictory to me. For starters, the proprietary
programs themselves aren't peer reviewable, so the researchers (and
other scientists and the general public) just have to blindly trust what
those programs say.

Then, assuming they manage to sign a NDA which gives them access to the
source code, that doesn't change anything about because other scientists
might not be willing (or able) to do the same, and the general public
will still be unaware of the programs' inner workings.

And of course, reproducibility means a different person can use a
different piece of software which serves the same purpose and obtain the
same result. This isn't possible when all research is based on specific
proprietary programs, especially those programs which dominate their
fields and don't have any free replacements yet (and there are plenty of
them).

There is also the "common good" factor. That is, when the purpose of
research is the betterment of society, having tools which can be
improved collaboratively will surely yield better results.

Lastly, costs are also an issue. Some scientific software has
prohibitive licensing costs, and as we know funding in research is often
scarce.

There are also other issues, such as many of those programs being
Windows-only, DRM and confidentiality concerns (how to be sure
patient/subject privacy is kept if a program connects to its remote
servers?).

So, in the end, I don't think science and proprietary software are
compatible at all, and research conducted through proprietary software
should be considered unreliable.

For this reason, I think proprietary software's unscientific nature
should be stressed more when promoting free/libre software to scientists.