Should software hold data hostage?

Software tools have become an indispensable part of modern biology, but issues surrounding propriety file formats and closed software architectures threaten to stunt the growth of this rapidly expanding area of research. In an effort to ensure continuous software upgrades to provide a continuous inc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature biotechnology 2004-08, Vol.22 (8), p.1037-1038
Main Authors: Wiley, H Steven, Michaels, George S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics
Biologists
Biology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology
Biomedicine
Biotechnology
commentary
Computational Biology - methods
Computational Biology - standards
Computer literacy
Database Management Systems - standards
Databases, Factual - standards
Genomics
Information Dissemination - methods
Information Storage and Retrieval - methods
Information Storage and Retrieval - standards
Life Sciences
Neurosciences
Open data
Open source software
Operating systems
Public domain
Software - standards
Software industry
Software utilities
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Summary:Software tools have become an indispensable part of modern biology, but issues surrounding propriety file formats and closed software architectures threaten to stunt the growth of this rapidly expanding area of research. In an effort to ensure continuous software upgrades to provide a continuous income stream, some software companies have resorted to holding the user's data hostage by locking them into proprietary file and data formats. Although this might make sense from a business perspective, it violates fundamental principles of data ownership and control. Such tactics should not be tolerated by the scientific community. The future of data-intensive biology depends on ensuring open data standards and freely exchangeable file formats.
ISSN:1087-0156
1546-1696
DOI:10.1038/nbt0804-1037