This repository is designed to capture ideas for contributions to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey broadly around the subject of open source astronomical software.
An idea we floated was to develop ~3 papers (designed to be presented as a coherent series) that discuss the role of open source software, sustainability, careers and training etc.
Authors: Arfon Smith, add your name here...
What this is: I want to write something that discusses how to make open source more sustainable within astronomy and astrophysics. Right now we're in a pretty familiar (as in, this is happening elsewhere too) position of lots of the open source (astronomy) packages being developed by community members with little/no dedicated funding. Open source is definitely recognized as valuable by many, but there's a widely-held belief, certainly by those at NSF, that open source is free to the funding agencies and not something that needs to support.
Rather than try and make some of the standard arguments for open source, supporting the people involved etc. in their careers, I think we should write something that takes these points for granted (i.e. cite previous papers articilating this point), and instead, focuses on the institutions that we already have in the community (e.g. universities, national labs, NASA science operation centers like STScI) and see if we could identify some potential roles for these organizations with an eye on supporting & sustaining open source research software. For example, if NASA or NSF wanted to support open source software, what might be a good way to fund it? What sustainability models are being tried by other communities, how might those be applied in astronomy?
What this isn't: An empassioned plea for funding for open source software. I think we should state clearly that open source is a critical part of what we do as a community but not write a paper trying to make this point (this has already been done).
- Financial support for open source: https://github.com/nayafia/lemonade-stand
- Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure: report
- What does a sustainable open source project look like? https://medium.com/libraries-io/what-does-a-sustainable-open-source-project-look-like-bf9b8cf824f8
- https://nadiaeghbal.com/tragedy-of-the-commons
- Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2013.11.1077
- Producing Open Source Software: https://producingoss.com/
Something about career credit, citations, funding, career paths.
Lots to lift from the text created for the Petabytes to science meeting report here: https://petabytestoscience.github.io/
Education and training for astronomers (software carpentry and ACI-REF) and how this relates to diversity and inclusion
Lots to lift from the text created for the Petabytes to science meeting report here: https://petabytestoscience.github.io/
(Loose notes from a conversation at AAS)
Need for data common/standard data management platforms?