Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Steve Crawford (crawfordsm@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 03:43:39 JST Steve Crawford

   On my way to the Reaearch Software Alloance Software Funders workshop.

   What are your biggest thoughts about funding open source software for science?

   #OpenScience #opensourcesoftware

   • Embed this notice
     powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 03:43:38 JST powersoffour

     in reply to

     @crawfordsm I don't have a well-articulated position, but I have a growing unease about the balance between sustaining existing projects and fostering new ones, and how that plays in to things like sunk cost (in ways that support each side) and community building.

     I'm not convinced we have enough of a longitudinal study of cost/benefits independent of other upheavals (political, hardware, software) to make informed decisions other than aspirational value judgments.

   • Embed this notice
     powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 03:45:20 JST powersoffour

     in reply to

     @crawfordsm I also wonder if the impact of modern political realities has been investigated, particularly as it impacts scientific software. Not necessarily from a "continuity of funding" perspective, but from the mental load of balancing and coordinating so many different levels of threat/need/community and how that impacts things like funded support of research software communities.

   • Embed this notice
     powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 04:01:32 JST powersoffour

     in reply to

     @crawfordsm Straying further from your original point, and on reflecting a bit more, I am genuinely curious how long (perhaps the answer is infinity) until scientific software developers or funders are hauled in front of congress. Or, maybe just called out explicitly in the annual "these are grants we think are dumb" lists.

   • Embed this notice
     powersoffour (powersoffour@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 04:58:27 JST powersoffour

     in reply to

     • Warrick Ball

     @warrickball @crawfordsm My first thought on seeing this was to joke "This is such a good idea I think I might write a single-author position paper outlining how I feel about it." and then I realized, that joke is basically a synecdoche of the academy

   • Embed this notice
     Warrick Ball (warrickball@mas.to)'s status on Tuesday, 10-Sep-2024 04:58:28 JST Warrick Ball

     in reply to

     @crawfordsm

     I'll bite! 🔥

     Current academic incentives are aligned *against* collaborating on software leaving us with classes of problem where no-one can afford to lay down enough infrastructure to build new software, even if we'd then make much greater research progress.

     Researchers also end up frequently retreading the same ground because then they can cite *their* package rather than collaborate to improve an existing package (e.g. by making it easier to use).

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R4d2E4m7tU