Summary of the ACAT Round Table Discussion: Open-source, knowledge sharing and scientific collaboration

Understand

Round table discussions are in the tradition of ACAT.

• This year's plenary round table discussion was devoted to questions related to the use of scientific software in High Energy Physics and beyond.
• The 90 minutes of discussion were lively, and quite a lot of diverse opinions were spelled out.
• Although the discussion was, in part, controversial, the participants agreed unanimously on several basic issues in software sharing: (i) The importance of having various licensing models in academic research; (ii) The basic value of proper recognition and attribution of intellectual property, including scientific software; (iii) The user respect for the conditions of use, including licence statements, as formulated by the author.