Sorry, I forgot.. the motivation in not only the ethic of the software itself.. is that too often (at least in my sector, forest economics but economics in general as well) you see "results" arising from some sort of models that are described more or less in detail in the paper, but which software implementation is not available to really check the assumptions and the logic of the model.. I think it's a shame of the sector..
On 30 September 2015 at 16:33, Antonello Lobianco (not reply) < blackhole@lobianco.org> wrote:
While in the traditional software production sector the private (economic) driver to use an existing software is those of modifying it and licensing the modified software, in the academic context the economic/private driver to modify a software is rather to use it to publish papers.
As it is unethical that you use a GPL software, modify it and pursuit your private interest licensing it keeping your modifications as closed source, I feel unethical that in the academic sector you can use GPL software, make modifications for your own private interest (making publications) and not give them back to the community.
I hence proposed for my software a sort of academic licence that state as follow. Please consider that I still let people to use the software for whatever scope they want, just to release the code they derive from it if they make publications with it.
This software is covered by the above GNU GPL version 3 licence with the
following exceptions that prevail over the GNU GPL version:
#1: Any public communication (not limited: working papers, articles, technical reports) of results derived from running a modified version of this software requires the publication of the source code corresponding to such modifications; #2: Publishing communications derived from unmodified versions of the software on which new data is applied doesn't require the publication of the data; #3: Any modifications must be released under the same licence of the unmodified software, including these exceptions. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3, 29 June 2007
[...etc..]
Would such licence be legal (and would still allow the usage of GPL components) ? Would it be "ethic" (and would still be considered "free software") ?
Regards, Antonello
-- Antonello Lobianco
↪ 2015-09-30 Wed 16:40, Antonello Lobianco (not reply) blackhole@lobianco.org:
Sorry, I forgot.. the motivation in not only the ethic of the software itself.. is that too often (at least in my sector, forest economics but economics in general as well) you see "results" arising from some sort of models that are described more or less in detail in the paper, but which software implementation is not available to really check the assumptions and the logic of the model.. I think it's a shame of the sector..
I believe what you are trying to fix is the fact that articles of scientific nature are not always “reproducible” or checkable because they're not making the source code available.
I agree that it's an important problem and that the ethical thing to do when you conduct or publish such research is to make source code available.
But I don't think that the proposed licensing tactic is the right way to address that. It's not a matter of software freedom.
Maybe you should look at “open access” tactics and push scientific journals to require making the software used available for other scientists.
Best,