On Wed, Jul 25, 2018 at 9:57 AM, Peter Baumann < p.baum...@jacobs-university.de> wrote:
> Hi Christian, > > > while I could not agree more to what you say there is one point to > disagree with: > > On 24.07.2018 18:43, Christian Willmes wrote: > > Dear Suchith, > > I understand your point, and I also support your views on this, but this > is from my perspective a too personal/particular issue, as to have it as an > "OSGeo open letter". Also, because this is more of an ICA and not so much > an OSGeo issue, I think. > > First, I would keep it more general. You address a particular issue (UN > SDG book published by esri), and also some personal background (this should > not matter to the addressed subject). I would recommend you keep it from > being personal and denouncing proprietary GIS vendors. If a company plays > by the rules of science, there is nothing wrong about that company > publishing a scientific book. I.e. almost all book publishers are > commercial companies with interests somehow and somewhere. > > You need to “attack” scientific “wrong doing” by that particular company > in conducting the editing and publication of that book. Publishing books if > done correctly is not wrong, even by a vendor with vested interests. But if > you witness, for example, that submissions using open source GIS solutions > are disadvantaged against the submissions using products of the proprietary > GIS vendor publishing the book, that would be the point to raise and attack. > > Second, better write about how it should be done to avoid this negative > “Fake Science” things from happening. Here the idea of Open Science and > Reproducible Science is key, i.e. the most openness and transparency > possible. We just need more transparency in science and also in the whole > process of editing/reviewing and publishing a book. And this is where OSGeo > can contribute. Basically, real reproducible and open science is not > possible without open source software. If you can’t see how something is > implemented, you can not really reproduce the results. > > > No. Open science and open source software are fundamentally different > things. For example, if you derive stats from some data set via SQL it does > not matter whether it comes from open-source PostgreSQL or from proprietary > Oracle. Because the SQL language in its syntax and semantics is > standardized, and it is assured thereby that both systems will deliver the > same results. So standards actually are a prerequisite for science to be > comparable, but surely not open source. > If you use proprietary products and can't verify that the result is not due to a bug (even an intended bug ), you are missing an important step on verifiability. Open Source (as in "I can see the code") is an important piece of open science.
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