How to deal with scooping when doing open-source tools development? I am developing a tool for bioinformatics ... it is an application that will be open source when finished. It is something that has use outside of bioinformatics as well.

I am also using some open source tools to develop my application. When I need help with the open tools I'm using, it's kinda difficult for me to get the help I need without telling the people what I'm using it for.

I asked my prof if I could make the app public while it's in development, and he suggested it might be a bad idea to do that because of the potential of someone scooping the work and publishing it before we get a chance to do so.

My questions are:


How serious is this problem? Do people really just take someone else's work and publish it as their own? And do journals really allow this?
My prof mentioned this in terms of someone developing the tool on their own and then publishing it (i.e. take the idea but not necessarily the code). Is there anyway I could have my cake and eat it too - i.e. make the tool public and still guard against scooping?
How does your lab deal with open source tools? Do they get released to public before the publication?
Having developed academic open source software for 20 years, I have never heard anyone getting "scooped" by putting code out there. And I know lots of people who do all of their development out in the open, often years before they have it all together to make it into a publication.

I believe that the reason why this never happens is that it's difficult to take someone else's code and understand it in sufficient detail without the author's deep familiarity with the subject. Certainly to understand it at a level that would allow that person to write up a publication about it and claim that it's their own invention. (That's in addition to the fact that everyone knows that that would be unethical.) It's so much easier to collaborate with the original author if one had to add something because then one would have the person who understands it all help you with it.

So I wouldn't worry about this. Put stuff out there and see that people use it. You'll build a reputation that way, and that's what you're going for. If you keep things secret, nobody will know it but you also aren't going to gain any reputation points for it.