Is Mascot (Matrix Science) Open Source?

Question

[Louis]

Is the proprietary Matrix Science software under the Mascot project considered open source? From what I can see on the website the source code can be downloaded, but it comes with license caveats that no changes can be made to this — does this qualify as open source ?

There is a Java API called Mascotdatfile which is described as "open source", but I'm unsure as to whether this is simply an interface for closed source software. There are lots of "up and coming" proteomics tools (I've seen a couple anyway) that are explicitly open source and non-proprietary, and I'm just wondering how this one compares.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read about open access, the licensing/copyright is a separate matter to "open source"?

[Niek De Klein]

Mascotdatfile is opensource, Mascot isn't. Mascotdatfile is only about parsing the output from Mascot. Also, where have you seen that you can download the Mascot source code?