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Academic papers yanked after authors found to have used unlicensed software (go.theregister.com)

submitted 1 day ago by grue@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/58093

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[–] infeeeee@lemm.ee 88 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

In the Register article they didn't copied from the source that the scientists were from Egypt.

Flow3D has different academic and research licenses: https://www.flow3d.com/academic-program/

There is a free research license available, but it's only for 4 months. It's short, researches can take much longer than that.
There is a free teaching license, but it can have limitations for using the software outside education. It may be forbidden to use outside classes, so it's possible that they had a teaching license, but they couldn't use that for research?
There are licenses for full departments, but it's available for selected countries only.

It's strange that they went after these scientists. In 2nd and 3rd word countries software privacy for work is still common. Everything is cheaper, but software prices are the same as in the US, so they pay relatively more for the same tool. I found that a normal license for Flow 3D can cost USD 100k. According to a quick search civil engineers get USD 2000 yearly in Egypt.

Usually American software companies don't really care about piracy by individuals in these countries. The rationale is that it's better for them if they use their software without payment instead of using a software from another vendor without payment. They go after bigger companies, at least that's my experience.

That's why this story is strange to me, or at least something else should be behind it.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

Yup, wide use creates a lock-in effect. If your software is used by everyone, paid or otherwise, it's the standard and you will never run out of paid users. This is why CAD companies offer free tiers and why student subscriptions are always heavily discounted.

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