David Koes edited section_Discussion_begin_figure_centering__.tex  about 8 years ago

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ignores cases where software is no longer available, this is an underestimate.  However, although we did find instances where an open source package was referenced in a paper but was no longer available, we did not find this to be a common occurrence. Most packages, even those that have remained unchanged for a decade, see some usage. In fact, a number of packages (23), still see significant usage despite having received no development for the past 18 months. This underlies the importance of releasing source code through a third-party site such as SourceForge or GitHub as it ensures the continued existence of a project.     A major advantage of open source is that in cases where a popular project is not being actively developed (e.g. AutoDock Vina \cite{Trott_2009}) new projects can fork the source code and continue development (e.g. smina \cite{Koes_2013}). However, a potential problem area with open source development is the lack of central coordination and efficient pooling of resources. For example, there are several forks of AutoDock Vina that improve it's performance on computing clusters and there are an array of tools in several categories that effectively perform the same task. This underscores the importance of efforts likethe  Blue Obeliskmovement  \cite{Guha_2006,blueobelisk} and Open Chemistry (\url{http://www.openchemistry.org})  which fosters foster  collaboration among open source cheminformatics projects. It is clear that open source software plays an important role in the scientific community and is a vibrant sub-community of its own with a wide assortment of projects under development and in widespread use. The open source software packages cataloged here provide launching points for the development of new tools for enabling further scientific discovery.