Free software: Scientific opportunities and challenges for the future

Summary form only given. Free software has revolutionised the way software is designed, developed, distributed, marketed and maintained. It has made freely accessible an incredible amount of source code, and enabled code reuse at a level which nobody believed possible just ten years ago. Such a radical change carries with itself many new challenges, which are scientific, organisational and economic. In this talk we will review some of them, and highlight possible ways to tackle them.