I think by "scientific and scholarly excellence" the author(s) are referring to the research produced by universities rather than the actual pedagogy.
Open source systems are more conducive to allowing full control of a computer, which ultimately boils down to more accurate and/or efficient simulation and modeling than possible with closed-source software.
Another consideration is stability. Suppose you've got some real number-crunching to do, and your algorithm is going to take eight hours to complete. Do you want to trust it to an OS that's going to crash half-way through (or at the last second)? Closed-source systems are too unpredictable for such applications, which is why Linux and its relatives are becoming increasingly popular among physicists and the like. I'd be interested to know if there is a version of Mathematica or Maple (or another good CAS) for Linux.
Anyhow, I digress. The point is, open-source should be the choice of scientists and mission-critical users because it allows freedom of data manipulation, reliable stability, and the best security available.
On the other hand, it would be tough to push any of the current open-source operating systems on anyone whose only consideration is usability.
Okay, that was more than my two cents.
Noah Gourlie
BK '02
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 27 2005 - 03:30:03 EDT