This post was motivated by Ian Gent's recomputation manifesto and his blog post about it. While I agree with pretty much everything said there, there is one point that I strongly disagree with, and here I'd like to explain the reasons in some detail. The point in question is "The only way to ensure recomputability is to provide virtual machines". To be fair, the manifesto specifies that it's the only way "at least for now", so perhaps our disagreement is not as pronounced as it may seem.
