The importance of free software to science

Summary

Welcome to LWN.net The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net! June 4, 2025 This article was contributed by Lee Phillips Free software plays a critical role in science, both in research and in disseminating it. Aspects of software freedom are directly relevant to simulation, analysis, document preparation and preservation, security, reproducibility, and usability. Free software brings practical and specific advantages, beyond just its ideological roots, to science, while proprietary software comes with equally specific risks. As a practicing scientist, I would like to help others—scientists or not—see the benefits from free software in science. Although there is an implicit philosophical stance here—that reproducibility and openness in science are desirable, for instance—it is simply a fact that a working scientist will use the best tools for the job, even if those might not strictly conform to the laudable goals of the free-software movement. It turns out that free software, by virtue of its freedom, is often the best tool for the job. Reproducing results Scientific progress depends, at its core, on reproducibility. Traditionally, this referred to the results of experiments: it should be possible to attempt their replication by following the procedures described in papers. In the case of a failure to replicate the results, there should be enough information in the paper to make that finding meaningful. The use of computers in science adds some extra dimensions to this concept. If the conclusions depend on some complex data massaging using a computer program, another researcher should be able to run the same program on the original or new data. Simulations should be reproducible by running the identical simulation code. In ...