diff options
| author | Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org> | 2020-12-07 01:14:11 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Mohammad Akhlaghi <mohammad@akhlaghi.org> | 2020-12-07 01:14:11 +0000 |
| commit | 12ba369dd3c168eb16e2869ce2c3e8af1c91f574 (patch) | |
| tree | acd6b773dcf9a0b57644d928461370387bc1d194 /paper.tex | |
| parent | 834f5bea404c49c96b05ce7e8332ed05cfd467f3 (diff) | |
Proprietary obsolescence added in free software criteria
Today, Richard Stallman sent a mail in 'info-gnu@gnu.org' (GNU's public
announcements mailing list) about proprietary obsolescence (or planned
obsolescence) [1]. After looking into it, I saw there is actually a
Wikipedia page for this concept. Since it direclty relates to our Free
software criteria, I thought its good to use this technical term there.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-obsolescence.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
Diffstat (limited to 'paper.tex')
| -rw-r--r-- | paper.tex | 2 |
1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions
@@ -270,7 +270,7 @@ This is related to longevity, because if a workflow contains only the steps to d Reproducibility is not possible with a black box (non-free or non-open-source software); this criterion is therefore necessary because nature is already a black box, we do not need an artificial source of ambiguity \new{wrapped} over it. A project that is \href{https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html}{free software} (as formally defined by GNU), allows others to run, learn from, \new{distribute, build upon (modify), and publish their modified versions}. When the software used by the project is itself also free, the lineage can be traced to the core algorithms, possibly enabling optimizations on that level and it can be modified for future hardware. -In contrast, non-free tools typically cannot be distributed or modified by others, making it reliant on a single supplier (even without payments). +In contrast, non-free tools typically cannot be distributed or modified by others, making it reliant on a single supplier (even without payments)\new{, and prone to \href{https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-obsolescence.html}{proprietary obsolescence}}. \new{It may happen that proprietary software is necessary to convert proprietary data formats produced by special hardware (for example micro-arrays in genetics) into free data formats. In such cases, it is best to immediately convert the data upon collection, and archive the data in free formats (for example, on Zenodo).} |