Open Source/Open Science 1999

From: David Zimmerman (zimm@physgi01f.phy.bnl.gov)
Date: Thu Aug 12 1999 - 18:51:59 MEST


This conference may be of interest to roottalk subscribers.

There will be an Open Source/Open Science conference at Brookhaven 
National Lab on October 2nd.


URL:
http://openscience.bnl.gov/


                     Scientists have been making good use of public domain
software since its inception to do their research. Most hard sciences use
computing tools to a great extent and with the advent of the Internet,
computer networking capabilities have been come a critical research tool as
well. Today, the use of the term, software in the public domain, has given
way to the term Open Source. In essence, this term refers to the software
which is freely available via the Internet, including the source code form
which it was built. 

                      Open Source software development projects have provided
a foundation from which a lot of computing cycles have been put to good use.
Scientists, in their quest for driving down the cost of computing, have
migrated to using Open Source operating systems running on mass market
computing platforms. Open Source operating systems also tend to have a bounty
of Open Source software packages pre-built and properly installed which saves
a lot of administrative time. The Internet networking capability of these
Open Source operating systems is also first rate, thus enabling the full
Internet connectivity scientist have come to expect from their computing
environment. 
                   Scientists are also starting to following the Open Source
paradigm in their own software development efforts by publishing their source
code on the Internet. Sharing the effort in their software development over
the Internet has given them more time to work on their core research
activities. 

                   At this point in time, the Open Source software
development paradigm is gaining major recognition in the private domain.
Because of the recent swell in awareness of Open Source software by the
general public, it was deemed that the time was ripe to hold a conference
which dealt directly with the issue of Open Source and science. There are
many common threads which drive the advances in the two fields which have
been addressed elsewhere. Also, the two fields share the same friction caused
by market forces when it becomes a major participant in the development
cycle. The conference will expose the benefits and draw backs of the open
source development model and the software which it has produced and is
capable of producing in the future. It will explore the extent to which it is
helping scientists advance in their research and the possibility of feeding
back those advanced to the community which has brought the Open Source code
base to its current  mature level.



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