Open-source cosmic clockwork (StarStuff)

Part of the reason is that the "culture" of science encourages sharing of results, methods, tools, etc. Indeed, that was the culture of academia for a long time. It was out of that culture that Richard Stallman's first glimmerings of his Free Software crusade grew. Time was, if you wrote code for academic purposes, there was no question but that you would make it "open source", if it occurred to you to distribute it at all.

Alas, in more recent times, university administrations have figured out that they can get a lot of money by patenting and licencing what their scientists produce (even if it is produced on government grants). And, of course, they quickly figure out that software should be included in that, and they should be just as proprietary and grabby as the Microsofts of the world. Tragic, really. At the University where I'm on the faculty, if you read the intellectual property policies, it's very stilted against science. If you write a book, or do something generally that folk in the humanities would do, you the indivual completely own the rights. However, if you invent something, then the University gets the rights to the patent, and you get some cut. Brutally unfair. Even more ironic, when you realize that the scientists tend to bring in more federal funding (just because there is more money there for it), meaning both that a greater fraction of their effort will tend to be tax-supported as opposed to university supported, and that they tend to bring in more money to the university. Yet, they get the bum deal when it comes to IP.

-Rob