> Depends on the science. Facial recognition software? That requires software to make progress.
Like every computation - you can simulate it on paper :)
> It is usually to the benefit of the individual researcher to keep the code under wraps, but not to the benefit of the field of research. A researcher benefits from generating results. They do not benefit from other people being able to verify their results. In fact, they may even benefit from raising the barrier to entry, as it makes their own results more important in the field.
It's to the benefit not only of the individual researcher, but also of the institutions - because they don't need to upkeep code repositories - so publishing is not as costly as it could be, when releasing source code was mandatory.
From field of research point of view - as I wrote earlier - - source code is not important. It may be useful in some situations but only for individual researcher (like your girlfriend).
> Without having access to the original source code, you can't figure out what caused the difference.
I think that's good reason to share the code or for discussion between researchers - but I don't think it's enough to make sharing code mandatory, because your girlfriend could for example write article pointing out differences between her result and previous result(s) and be done (assuming she was certain about her result), without ever looking at others source codes.
Like every computation - you can simulate it on paper :)
> It is usually to the benefit of the individual researcher to keep the code under wraps, but not to the benefit of the field of research. A researcher benefits from generating results. They do not benefit from other people being able to verify their results. In fact, they may even benefit from raising the barrier to entry, as it makes their own results more important in the field.
It's to the benefit not only of the individual researcher, but also of the institutions - because they don't need to upkeep code repositories - so publishing is not as costly as it could be, when releasing source code was mandatory. From field of research point of view - as I wrote earlier - - source code is not important. It may be useful in some situations but only for individual researcher (like your girlfriend).
> Without having access to the original source code, you can't figure out what caused the difference.
I think that's good reason to share the code or for discussion between researchers - but I don't think it's enough to make sharing code mandatory, because your girlfriend could for example write article pointing out differences between her result and previous result(s) and be done (assuming she was certain about her result), without ever looking at others source codes.