- Weiner, Benjamin J;
- Blanton, Michael R;
- Coil, Alison L;
- Cooper, Michael C;
- Davé, Romeel;
- Hogg, David W;
- Holden, Bradford P;
- Jonsson, Patrik;
- Kassin, Susan A;
- Lotz, Jennifer M;
- Moustakas, John;
- Newman, Jeffrey A;
- Prochaska, JX;
- Teuben, Peter J;
- Tremonti, Christy A;
- Willmer, Christopher NA
Astronomical software is now a fact of daily life for all hands-on members of
our community. Purpose-built software for data reduction and modeling tasks
becomes ever more critical as we handle larger amounts of data and simulations.
However, the writing of astronomical software is unglamorous, the rewards are
not always clear, and there are structural disincentives to releasing software
publicly and to embedding it in the scientific literature, which can lead to
significant duplication of effort and an incomplete scientific record. We
identify some of these structural disincentives and suggest a variety of
approaches to address them, with the goals of raising the quality of
astronomical software, improving the lot of scientist-authors, and providing
benefits to the entire community, analogous to the benefits provided by open
access to large survey and simulation datasets. Our aim is to open a
conversation on how to move forward. We advocate that: (1) the astronomical
community consider software as an integral and fundable part of facility
construction and science programs; (2) that software release be considered as
integral to the open and reproducible scientific process as are publication and
data release; (3) that we adopt technologies and repositories for releasing and
collaboration on software that have worked for open-source software; (4) that
we seek structural incentives to make the release of software and related
publications easier for scientist-authors; (5) that we consider new ways of
funding the development of grass-roots software; (6) and that we rethink our
values to acknowledge that astronomical software development is not just a
technical endeavor, but a fundamental part of our scientific practice.