Open Source Software Policy Options for NASA Earth and Space Sciences (2018) / Chapter Skim
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4 Lessons Learned from Community Perspectives
4 Lessons Learned from Community Perspectives
Pages 48-59
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From page 48... ...
Concerns included legal ramifications, institutional barriers, costs, and the impact on individual scientists and their careers. Some suggested that an open source policy may not always benefit science, because for researchers, time spent publishing software comes at the expense of time spent doing science.2 While an open source policy may enhance science for other researchers, it could be at the expense of the original researcher's scientific output.
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From page 49... ...
Finding: The NASA science community generally recognizes the value of open source software and supports the principles of openness, but concerns prevail on the details of implementation and the impact on science and scientific careers. Recommendation: NASA Science Mission Directorate should explicitly recognize the scientific value of open source software and incentivize its development and support, with the goal that open source science software becomes routine scientific practice.
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Some express concern that transitioning to an open source requirement within a grant period may not allow developers the time to fully test the code or complete their own scientific findings with the code before releasing it to the broader community.9 In other cases, especially for software focusing on data mining and management (e.g., AstroPy) , open sourcing the code from inception has produced not only a broad user group, but also a broad developer team.
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requires OSS and open access to all the needed metadata including initial conditions, data inputs, libraries, compiling requirements, 10 D.C.Ince, L Hatton, and J
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OSS facilitates broader code review and builds trust among scientists and code projects. Finding: Reproducible research requires both open source software and good metadata, including initial conditions, data inputs, libraries, compiling requirements, computing environments, and so on.
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From page 53... ...
4.2 EDUCATION AND TRAINING NEEDS Education underpins all efforts to move the NASA science community toward acceptance of OSS. Software development experience varies widely across and within scientific disciplines, and the education component of any policy implementation needs to account for these differences.
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From page 54... ...
Finding: Community understanding, experience, and familiarity with open source software is essential to the acceptance of open source software as a tool to enhance scientific research. Two community deficiencies were of particular concern: the lack of training in software development and scientific computing and the missing guidance on legal issues for scientists.
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From page 55... ...
Recommendation: NASA Science Mission Directorate should initiate and sponsor programs to educate and train researchers in open source best practices. Topics could include, but are not limited to, export controls, licensing and intellectual property, workflows, and software development.
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From page 56... ...
. Finding: Making code open source is valuable, but NASA Science Mission Directorate will need to consider the additional costs to the developers and to NASA.
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Recommendation: Any open source software policy that NASA Science Mission Directorate develops should not impose an undue burden on researchers; therefore, any policy should be as simple as pos sible, and any mandates should be fully funded. 4.3.3 Support for Good Practice, Governance, Maintenance, and Infrastructure The implementation of a NASA OSS policy necessitates a governance infrastructure to ensure software quality and security.
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Recommendation: NASA Science Mission Directorate should support open source community-developed libraries that advance NASA science. 4.4 ENABLING CREDIT AND CAREER ADVANCEMENT Community members are concerned that making software open source makes their intellectual property vulnerable to reuse without attribution (WP 6, 15, 20, 21, 42)
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From page 59... ...
. Recommendation: NASA Science Mission Directorate should foster career credit for scientific software development by encouraging publications, citations, and other recognition of software created as part of NASA-funded research.
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