“Should I reject a manuscript because the analyses weren’t done using open software?” I overheard a couple of young researchers discussing. Initially I thought it was a joke but, to my surprise, it was not funny at all.
There is an unsettling, underlying idea in that question: the value of a scientific work can be reduced to its computability. If I, the reader, cannot replicate the computation the work is of little, if any, value. Even further, my verification has to have no software cost involved, because if that is not the case we are limiting the possibility of computation to only those who can afford it. Therefore, the almost unavoidable conclusion is that we should force the use of open software in science.
