> scientists want to spend their time doing science, not improving free software.
Wasnt the whole point of science to build their own chain of verifiable tools to rely on, instead of having to trust secret, unverified commercial black boxes?
Cynically, the point of doing science is to secure funding. Your ability to receive funding is based on your publication record. Improving software takes time away from writing papers, and is therefore counterproductive. Improving free software is even more counterproductive, as you are giving your tools away to your competitors.
Yes, but discovering and proving interesting or useful facts requires some degree of transparency and replication. It's at least better, when possible, for a scientist to use apparatus whose functioning they can inspect, and that includes any major software components.
That's a bit different from Stallman's focus. Stallman is mainly interested in the freedom of users to modify the software they use (and share those modifications). But for scientific software the real issue is whether scientists can look at how it works. It would be fine for it to be under a "look but don't redistribute" proprietary license.
Other things being equal, it really would be better to use a more transparent apparatus.
But other things aren't equal, and the productivity difference is order(s) of magniture more important than the transparency of an apparatus that has been successfully used by many others and is believed to give correct results.
Wasnt the whole point of science to build their own chain of verifiable tools to rely on, instead of having to trust secret, unverified commercial black boxes?