Round Table Introduction: From an institution-developed package to a sustainable project
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Mario Juric proposes turning institution-developed astronomical data analysis software into sustainable open source projects. For example, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) project's $50M software could benefit other telescopes but is currently difficult to install and use due to lack of documentation and support. The discussion focuses on how to leverage a small budget to maximize the software's impact and build an active community around specialized code from "company" projects. Key questions include what activities like documentation, packaging and outreach would be most effective, and whether hiring someone is the best approach.
Round Table Introduction: From an institution-developed package to a sustainable project
- 1. Round table: From an institution-developed package to a sustainable project Turning institution-developed codes into sustainable community-driven projects Mario Juric <mjuric@astro.washington.edu> UW Astronomy | DIRAC | eScience @mjuric
- 2. @mjuric The Problem > To solve their data processing problems, big science projects are making significant $ investments and advances in analysis software. Software is becoming as expensive as physical instruments. > These projects don’t have the resources or mandate to fully publicize, generalize, or make their codes sufficiently open and friendly for others to use or build on. The code effectively becomes project-specific instrumentation. > Issue: The the community doesn’t benefit as much as it could. Others have to reinvent the wheel; the use of inefficient or suboptimal methods continues.
- 3. @mjuric Example: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope > LSST will process >100x data than any optical astronomy project before it. > Software funded at ~M$50 level. > Processes images to identify objects and measure their properties. Likely to have the best (most accurate, most optimized) data processing algorithms available. Already 95% general-purpose (can run on different instruments)! > Issues: Complex install (bespoke install system). Difficult to use. Not sufficiently documented (a.t.m.). Few resources (people time!) within the projects to improve those aspects.
- 4. @mjuric Topics for Discussion > We’d like to find a way to “liberate” the value that’s in this codebase: – Make it usable enough for other telescopes to try (and adopt) – Make it usable so individual astronomers can benefit from improved algorithms – Build a self-sustaining community of users and contributors, beyond LSST > How would one take existing institution- or grant-developed codebase and turn it into a sustainable community project? > Can one even build a developer community around a specialist, “company”, project? What are the experiences of projects that have succeeded at building developer communities? – Experiences that worry us: Netscape, OpenSolaris, AOSP, …
- 5. @mjuric A Concrete Hack: Use M$0.1 to leverage M$50+ > Assuming we have k$100-200 available, how should we invest those $$ to have the largest impact wrt. the goals above. – What do we do? > Documentation, packaging, outreach, support…? – How do we do it? > Give in to the “Hire a postdoc/graduate student” instinct? > Or are there better ways? > “It’s unlikely to work, don’t even try” is a valid answer!