[HN Gopher] Open source and the future of nuclear physics
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Open source and the future of nuclear physics
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 153 points
Date : 2023-04-11 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| maxloh wrote:
| I won't be surprised if one day I saw "Open source is fueling the
| future of nuclear bomb" on HN.
| bgribble wrote:
| That would be old news!
|
| My first job as a programmer, in the early 1990s, was working
| on a tool that was used in one of the last US underground
| nuclear tests. It was a finite-element electromagnetic effects
| simulator, designed to help get off of actual bombs blowing up
| and on to simulation to help design for radiation and EM
| effects on military equipment.
|
| My part was a 2.5d viewer that showed the input model and let
| you rotate it around and zoom in and out and such. We used X386
| (the predecessor of XFree86), the Athena widgets, and GNU tools
| on a commercial SysV Unix for PC hardware. This was the era of
| the actual 386; maybe Linux existed but it was well pre 1.0 (I
| know because I started installing Linux in the 0.99 kernel
| days, and that was 3 or so years later)
|
| Open source has been fueling the future of every single
| technical endeavor for 30+ (40+? more?) years.
| cdibona wrote:
| One project that I didn't see in the article was the rtos
| https://marte.unican.es/ which a number of prominent experiments
| use.
| anthk wrote:
| It's weird to see an OS developed from a place pretty close to
| home...
| gumby wrote:
| Not when you live in Palo Alto! So you get an idea of what
| it's like here. If where you live isn't particularly fancy,
| it'll be an even more accurate experience.
| colordrops wrote:
| Didn't nuclear physics also help fuel the future of open source
| and the web in general, e.g. CERN.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes! Turns out open, transparent, low-barrier scientific and
| technological development snowballs itself. Who would have
| thunk :)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I've always found academic research to be one of the most natural
| homes for open source software. It's in the paper formatting
| software (latex) and much of the lab software.
| bsder wrote:
| Where is KiCad? CERN pumps quite a lot of money into KiCad.
|
| https://www.kicad.org/
| abhayhegde wrote:
| There is a broader statement: open source is fueling the future.
| In fact, holding off projects close sourced only makes it
| profitable for one-party for a while, until an open version spins
| off. Open source copies are bound to happen.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The title could be adequately rephrased: Intellectual Property
| Has Been Preventing the Future of Nuclear Physics
| acyou wrote:
| Alternate theory: open source is destroying the future. In
| fact, significant progress is occurring from concentrated
| capital investments made by public entities or corporations,
| and development slows down or regresses once open source
| alternatives become available. The likelihood of open source
| piracy occurring decreases the overall desire for coordinated,
| large scale technology development.
| [deleted]
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