5 November 2010 | EN Africa should embrace open source
scientific software, cutting costs and boosting IT skills across
the continent, argues Linda Nordling Restrictive academic
software can be a pain. The message "please do not hog the
Mathematica licence" greeted anyone logging onto the mathematics
department's website in a prominent UK university a few years
ago. Mathematica — a computational software package developed by
Wolfram Research, a private company, is widely used by
academics. But it can set a department back US$1000 per licensed
copy. A medium-sized mathematics department might buy 10
licences to service 100 users, so it is not surprising that
researchers jostle to use it. But what may be an eye-watering
expense at a top Western institution becomes a full-on barrier
at a poor African one. Few institutions on the continent can
afford proprietary science software. And that leads to rampant
software piracy. Software piracy is not only illegal,
potentially landing universities in trouble if they eve