There is an interesting article in Genomics and Proteomics on the dominence of ‘Freeware’ (which is a misnomer in this case, it should say Free/Open Source Software) vs. proprietary software in genomics research: ‘…Whether an academic DNA microarray user is able to use the accompanying software relates to the nature of academic research, Welebob says, and what they are using the software to do. “For academia, researchers are sitting on National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation grants, and the goal is to get published. To get published, they have to work within very novel space, so they need software packages where they can open the source code and [alter the program] themselves when they need to. They may be doing experiments and experimental designs that are very different than what a commercial package would support, because commercial packages in many ways are built to support more mainstream experimental designs and applications, which represent the largest market.”