Giuseppe Bilotta<p>This, BTW, is also the one single reason why I'm skeptical about the <a href="https://fediscience.org/tags/PublicMoneyPublicCode" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PublicMoneyPublicCode</span></a> initiative: the potential for abuse from more (politically) powerful groups to “run away” with somebody else's research and make it their own.</p><p>Consider this scenario: Ms. Little Known Researcher, PhD manages to win a small grant to work on some very useful research. She not only manages to successfully conduct her research, but she even develops a very useful software tool that leverage such research into a much-sought-out application. The university or research institution has an interest in leveraging such a tool, and hire someone to work with it and possibly on it to expand its functionality and do more science with it.</p><p>The obvious choice would be to hire Ms. L.K. Researcher, PhD, but as it happens there's Dr. Ing. Prof. Very Important Asshat who would rather have one of his gofers to be hired instead, so he pressures the board to give preference to his guy over the obvious choice.</p><p>Now here's the thing: with Public Money, Public Code, Ms. L.K. Researcher, PhD would have had to release her code as <a href="https://fediscience.org/tags/FLOSS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FLOSS</span></a>, making it easer for the board to cede to Dr. Ing. Prof. V.I. Asshat, requests:he gets his way, and Ms. L.K. Researcher, PhD can go look for a new job as a cashier as the gofer takes her place and research stagnates because he wasn't anywhere nearly as competent as her.</p><p>7/n</p>