Research Software Sustainability takes a Village
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1. Research software sustainability requires communities to support development and maintenance over time. 2. Strong communities cultivate relationships between developers, users, and other stakeholders to establish trust and shared responsibility for software. 3. Maintaining communities requires ongoing efforts like change management, skills development, and cultivating relationships that span organizational boundaries. Funders can support these community efforts.
Research Software Sustainability takes a Village
- 1. Research Software Sustainability takes a Village The significance of communities in making research software sustainable Professor Carole Goble CBE FREng FBCS Software Sustainability Institute UK ELIXIR, ELIXIR-UK Head of Node The University of Manchester, UK [email protected] https://www.future-of-research-software.org/ International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software 8-9 Nov 2022 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7304596
- 2. Research Software, Communities and me Mostly biomedical and biodiversity communities Work with organisations concerned with Research Software sustainability. Built and sustained a lot of Research Software.
- 3. Software: Workflow management systems Workflow management system
- 4. Workflow management systems Peter Amstutz, Maxim Mikheev, Michael R. Crusoe, Nebojša Tijanić, Samuel Lampa, et al. (2022): Existing Workflow systems. Common Workflow Language wiki, GitHub. https://s.apache.org/existing-workflow-systems updated 2022-08-30, accessed 2022-08-30.
- 5. Lots of wheel reinvention? it’s fun and was funded! Sustainable?? We do need more than one kind of wheel … … technical issues, types of data, analysis, users, communities …. Analysis Code one-off me research Prototype Tools research need professorware Research Software Infrastructure professionalised product Concept: Thanks to Tom Honeyman, ARDC
- 6. to have a sustainable future you must create and sustain a future workforce that can develop, support and/or want to use your software. Image: It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability A Guidebook for Programs Serving Cultural and Scientific Heritage February 2018
- 7. Developers. Who sustain it Users. Who want it Researchers. Infrastructure providers. Institutions. Project Leaders. Advocates. Contributors. Supporters. Drivers. Collective Action and Responsibility And many others including funders
- 8. Sustained workflow systems have communities the flywheel of sustainable development and customer delight Support the core activity • reusability beyond the originators • driven by research need • embrace developer and user communities Build a critical mass to • innovate and maintain the code • develop and maintain the community Varying scales • from niche/boutique used by friends and family to production scale de facto used by strangers Adoption Sustainability Image: https://tribe.so/blog/the-community-flywheel/
- 9. 1. Sense of Community Closeness to Software Direct I know and use this code and I will die in a ditch for it Indirect This code is used by another code I use … someone else is looking out for it, right? Distant What code is that?
- 10. Software patchwork: Act Local, Think Global A web of dependencies, a spectrum of visibility. https://xkcd.com/2347/ User facing shiny thing Applications, tools, scripts Domain specific reusability Visible - Rocket Underware Platforms, infrastructure, libraries Big codes and little codes Cross-domain generic reusability Overly familiar Invisible – Rocket launcher
- 11. Community <-> software closeness Direct, indirect, unconnected to the software use or rely on in supply chain Biologist Bioinformatician Specialised software developer Platform developer Library maintainer Infrastructure provider Informs the need for funding
- 12. Trust <-> Sustainability Catch-22 Reciprocity and Values Levels of guarantee before banking your research on software. Users must trust developers - make software available, usable, reusable & fit for purpose. Developers must trust users - promote, advocate and help sustain it. Download and Go? No. Use it or lose it Contribute to it or lose it Report using it or lose it Socialisation SSI Fellowship programme
- 13. A Manifesto for Personal Responsibility June 19 – 24 , 2016, Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 16252, https://www.dagstuhl.de/16252 Individuals have to be empowered, incentivized and it becomes normative develop software as open source right from the start whenever possible. document my academic software for users with instructions and examples. package, release and archive versions of my software. consider and document the sustainability of my research software. publish how I organize and run my software projects. match software engineering practices I recommend to the needs and resources of projects. help scientists improve the quality of their software without passing judgment. Recognition of academic software Academic software development processes Engineering of Academic Software, I Pledge I Will….
- 14. Need community engagement, infrastructure, processes and skills. Community support, trainers, document writers, project managers… Community cultivation & resourcing. Need access to developers who can take on sustainability. Recruits and retention. Incentives for and pathways to participation Access to software engineers in and between organisations. This illustration is created by Scriberia with The Turing Way community. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence https://zenodo.org/record/6821117#.Y16APuTP2F4, Adapted by Carole Goble 2. Community cultivation
- 15. Community cultivation, development, support, governance & management, heavy volunteer participation
- 16. Credit: Christopher Woods, Solving the long-term maintenance and funding challenge of research software by founding the OpenBioSim Community Interest Company, RSECon2022, https://rsecon2022.society-rse.org/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuCBQH7pcxU Research Need for New Software Continued Funding (beyond prototype, fit for purpose) • Researchers who code, maybe Research Software Engineers • Added to grants that has that need • Specific software development grants • Single or multiple organisations Community Software Village • Support - Maintenance, feature development • Fixing technical debt, porting / packaging • Research Software Engineering • Managing community contributions • Multiple orgs, multiple sources of funds Research Need for New Features
- 17. Community cultivation to stand still, scale up, scale out, tensioned to scale and depth of user base Originators Sustainability Community Governance, contribution process management, technical support, developer onboarding, training, developer documentation, examples, ambassador programmes User adoption advocacy, user engagement, training, user onboarding, user documentation, examples, diversification Invest in social infrastructure Path finders Highway makers Community Expertise
- 18. A complex social system role diversity and process to grow & thrive not just survive* *Thanks to Tania Allard for the slogan! decision making, stakeholder interaction Community culture and practices Policies and processes Technical development cultural change management developers and users
- 19. 3. Change Management “developer push” -> “community pull”, open source ≠ open development Share & spread burden Tackle technical debt and support Software professionalisation Share & spread burden Research need pull Accelerate spread Tackle technical debt and support Contributor exclusion cult Borrowed labour coordination & uncertainty Volunteer featuritus Share & spread burden User demands & diversity overload Advocacy. It’s FREE – right?
- 20. Distance from Home direct collaborators -> remote users and developers family friends acquaintances strangers Reduced expectation to contribute collaboration & projects 2004-2020 100Ks of downloads, 100s projects users it Support distant if enough direct collaborators to support core development and tech debt.
- 21. Community cultivation & change mgt is not free just like software is not free From project to product. Productise & professionalise Multiple projects/orgs Governance (adapted from Carbone P., Value Derived from Open Source is a Function of Maturity Levels) Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Ladder Model of OSS Adoption
- 22. 4. Communities & resources span boundaries Organisation X has the money, Organisation Y has the developers Core funding Fade Community Software Village Multiple independent funding source coordination Collaboration considered necessary: software, infrastructure, expertise exceed institutional & national boundaries and projects
- 23. Community resourcing spans boundaries Collaboration essential and needs enabling Donut funding Add features, hide maintenance Core Funding Infrastructure grants Borrowed funding Research project, top slice development Fees, Subscriptions, Donations Hard to handle cash flows, especially in universities Diversification Spread the risk In kind labour Volunteers Donated by institutions Hand shake agreements Direct resourcing Indirect subsidies
- 24. Workflow sustainability models all have heavy volunteer participation Sponsored by institutional lent labour, national and European organisations & grant awards Open development community sponsored by the institutions the developers work in https://elifesciences.org/labs/d193babe/the-story-of-nextflow-building-a-modern-pipeline-orchestrator Open source development, Commercial spin out
- 25. Community not confined to one organisation Sponsorship – non-project based organisations & societies National and pan-national initiatives supporting workflow management systems Institutional organisations Software engineers Organisations encouraged to celebrate open source contribution
- 26. Community not confined to one organisation/project Social Enterprises: Not for Profits, Foundations, CICs, Fiscal Sponsors Direct route to channel funds. • Industry engagement. • Researchers build costs into research grants. • Funders direct funds to software actively used. Job security and career progression for RSEs. Long, painful & investment to put together Pan-national legal & financial complexities Liability of membership Viability depends on community size, type and kick-start seed funding. Credit: Christopher Woods, Head of Research Software Engineering Advanced Computing Research Centre, University of Bristol, UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuCBQH7pcxU
- 27. So! Funders are part of the Village Community support • Dedicated funds for community cultivation and change management. • Help with social enterprise set ups & governance. • Support organisations that enable RSEs Community nudges • Support wheel reuse rather than reinvention • Cultivate RSEs in orgs, so funds can be used • Socialisation that software has to be paid for. Image: It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability A Guidebook for Programs Serving Cultural and Scientific Heritage February 2018 https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/ITAV/It+Takes+a+Village+Home
- 28. So! Funders are part of the Village Funding flexibility • Enable collaboration • Get funds to right staff right place. • Direct maintenance/support funds to software researchers actively use. • Funds to bridge across projects Recognise software is in an ecosystem • Support the essential yet invisible. (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Sovereign Tech Fund Germany) Recognise that software has a core • That should be resourced beyond volunteers. Image: It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability A Guidebook for Programs Serving Cultural and Scientific Heritage February 2018 https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/ITAV/It+Takes+a+Village+Home
- 29. Acknowledgements • Christopher Woods, Head of Research Software Engineering, Advanced Computing Research Centre, University of Bristol, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuCBQH7pcxU • Ian Cottam, Ex-Vice President, current Vice Secretary, Society of Research Software Engineering, https://society-rse.org/ • Tania Allard,Co Director Quansight Labs, https://labs.quansight.org/ • Shoaib Sufi, Community Team Lead, Software Sustainability Institute, UK, https://www.software.ac.uk/ Resources UK Software Sustainability Institute https://www.software.ac.uk/resources/guides It Takes a Village: Open Source Software Sustainability A Guidebook for Programs Serving Cultural and Scientific Heritage February 2018 , https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/ITAV/It+Takes+a+Village+Home Icons purchased from Iconfinder https://www.iconfinder.com/ EPSRC EP/S021779/1
Editor's Notes
- #2: 4. Carole Goble: what is the significance of communities in making research software sustainable? Assuming that the software is shared and isn’t just for the originator. https://www.future-of-research-software.org/
- #7: To provide for and interact with software to enable it’s development, sustainability and advocacy.
- #8: Fellowship has to most influence/impact - it is ambassadorship and cheerleading (hands on - involving training and raising awareness) - (authentic as it's often people from the community doing it for their communities)
- #9: Support the core activity reusability beyond the originators boundary driven by research need developer and user communities Build a critical mass to make space to innovate and maintain the code to develop and maintain the community To varying scales from niche boutique by friends and family to production scale de facto use by strangers https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel Active user and developer communities That don’t just adopt but sustain the software supporting the originators Beyond the originators popularity communities of practice reference workflows documentation and support
- #11: The need to Act local, Think global Communities can get disconnected from each other and their software. Their own software vs some third party software No credit no sustainability.
- #12: Different perspectives, Dependency distance … has a significance for sustainability. Pre-workshop meeting on software visibility one persons foreground is anothers background
- #13: Socialisation – that software is not free and limited resources and developers that they have a user base
- #17: SEE, SHAPE, SUSTAIN
- #19: Software has a distinct lifecycle. As software matures the way it is developed, and people’s expectations will change. One of the significant steps occurs when your software becomes a viable product rather than just a project. Indicators of this change include having funding from more than one source, spending a larger proportion of time on support than on new development, having many active users outside your direct collaborators, and having users who are willing to contribute back to your project. Your software can have a far greater impact if it is made available to the others. But as your software is used further and further from home, you need to consider how to interact with the users of your software. Complexity of system, ranges of roles need supports Support staff derogitory, the village Users, developers, everyone else Social technical, socialisation Not all software should be sustained From gift to pay
- #20: codes of conduct
- #21: Can support the distant users if have enough resources through direct collaborations Core development centralised. User complacency Community Engagement Can support the distant users if have enough resources through direct collaborations.
- #23: Pulls in all directions How can and do communities practically contribute to sustainability? Declaration: “P4: Research software sustainability requires collaboration between public and private partners on a global scale because research software is embedded in larger webs of dependencies – of software, infrastructure, expertise – that exceed institutional and national boundaries”
- #25: All are open development and all have vibrant and passionate communities
- #27: Open source and open science ethos. https://investinopen.org/research/
- #29: Simplifyhttps://www.ukri.org/opportunity/software-for-research-communities/