Michael A. Heroux • September 25, 2019
Development and use of software are fundamental to numerous areas of scientific research. Many scientists write, modify, and use software to gain insight and prove scientific results. At the same time, formal software engineering techniques and knowledge that are widely adopted in other software development domains are not as commonly used in research software projects. In my experience, research software development approaches are more informal, particularly in the upstream activities of requirements, analysis, and design.
Data-driven Software Sustainability
Daniel S. Katz • September 18, 2019
This blog post suggests an expression that can be used to loosely quantify software sustainability, and then proposes that projects that seek sustainability use this formula when making decisions. It’s heavily based on a a white paper for the 2019 Collegeville Workshop on Sustainable Scientific Software (CW3S19), which in turn is based on a previous blog post, and it is crossposted on the BSSw and URSSI blogs, as well as my own blog.
Making Open Source Research Software Visible: A Path to Better Sustainability?
Neil Chue Hong • September 12, 2019
Why do open source research software projects appear to have a low rate of success? Is it because we lack appropriate models for sustaining research software development or is it because the community isn’t seeing the results? In “traditional” open source software projects, development is often sustained by creating a community of contributors from different organisations that collectively provide effort towards the ongoing maintenance and feature development of the software. For open source research software, although there are examples of the same model being used, it appears to have a smaller chance of success.
Growth of the US-RSE Association
Ian Cosden and Sandra Gesing • September 10, 2019
Research Software Engineers are playing an increasingly critical role in research software development (as described in a previous blog post). A community of RSEs began to form in the UK in 2012, by Jan 2019, the European Commission had published a report Recognising the Importance of Software in Research - Research Software Engineers (RSEs), a UK Example emphasizing that RSEs are crucial to sustain research software and research computing. In the US, the people in these roles have begun to build a more formal community with the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE).
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