Can we use other softwares for feature engineering?

Hi, thanks for organizing this competition. We are wondering whether we can use any open-source softwares to perform feature engineering (e.g. BLAST).

Thank you

Quoting the competition rules:

OPEN-SOURCE CODE. A Submission will be ineligible to win a prize if it was developed using code containing or depending on software licensed under an open source license:

So if the software’s open-source license is on that list, and permits commercial use, you’re fine.