The Need for an Open Research License

I'm a computer scientist. I'm very fond of free software as it helps me to use my machine to the fullest possible extent. It is also a bless when writing research code, free software will almost always cover the basics for you. A computer scientist can handle most of the issues that would be difficult to accomplish in a proprietary operating system reliably and rapidly.

It is a frequent extrapolation in the free software community to liken research to free software: all research software should be released as free software.

In this article, I argue that research code has very different requirements from free software (ie GNU/Linux systems) and propose that a license suited to the needs of a researcher should be crafted.

Now that my Msc. thesis is completed I wonder which parts of it I should release as free software. I need a license that will help me keep the research open. I wouldn't like my research being worked on behind closed doors.

In fact, that is what makes research different from commodity software. GPL is designed for generally useful software thus allows for private modifications of all sorts. That makes a lot of practical sense, as many people will need to modify the software for their own use.

Nevertheless, if I GPL a research code somebody will be able to 1) Extend my work in a journal paper, and not even talk about the code or the license. 2) Use my work as a service, say on the WWW without ever making the code freely available.

Moreover, my software is not generally useful software. It isn't an operating system, a command line shell, a compiler, or a web server. It is a very specific piece of code that can only be used and understood by experts. And I intend to keep it that way for a long time (say 3 years)

It is an orthogonal matter whether a work in computer science may have any practical use. As Dijkstra said, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Much research software does not even have a slight connection to the real world.

That said, researchers have unique requirements that we should consider. First of all, a researcher does a piece of work for recognition. Second, it's the results that matter not the software itself per se.

Third and most importantly, being able to maintain scientific practice is beneficial for both the scientist and science in general. Some scientists, like me, believe that is possible through making scientific process more open.

I'm cutting the article here, as my goal is to collect feedback from fellow hackers. What kind of a license would you deem appropriate for the requirements of a researcher who favors openness in science?