This column looks into projects and current affairs in the world of free software from the perspective of the GNU Project and the FSF. In this issue, I’lll focus on Comspari and the EU decision on software patents.
Proprietary software is ill-suited for scientific research because closed data formats and unknown algorithms leave no scope for validation. Free software is a better option, as the Comspari tool demonstrates. Comspari Scientists regularly face the challenge of having to compare two samples with only minimal difference in quality. Extremely small deviations in spectra are extremely difficult to detect by computational means. Graphs give scientists a far more practical approach, allowing them to pinpoint slight differences in complex records quickly and intuitively. Comspari [1], a free software application that prepares spectral data for comparison, is rapidly gaining popularity as a tool to assist with tasks such as mass spectrometry.
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