Overview
As a community, TERENA and its members produce a wide range of outputs from documents, advisories, software products, tools, right through to services. Whilst many of these find a natural home and sustainability model through the development cycle of the output, the process is varied and can leave some ideas floundering. This is particularly true of software developments. Most TERENA developments have a software component at the heart of the delivery - in NRENum.net it is the DNS Crawler, in TCS it is Djangora / Confusa - or have developed a service out of a software concept such as Filesender or Foodle. Ensuring these essential tools are properly maintained should be a priority.
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Within this workflow, software outputs are an area of current concern. Whereas simple outputs such as white papers can quickly and easily be hosted by TERENA, support for development, maintenance and hosting of software is a naturally more complex process for which there are no clear processes in place. This proposal aims to address that requirement.
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Current Obstacles
There are a number of obstacles for software development in the current TERENA environment that could be addressed by this proposal. The most immediate are:
- Moving on from pilot / incubation. The NREN community as a whole is very good at quickly turning ideas in to demonstration software and promoting the software out, but this often results in this pilot becoming a de facto service within the community without a clear support route and with an overhead on the original developer(s) unsupported by funding.
- Messy hosting arrangements. There is no one place for software hosting, and as a result projects will often accept any offer of space or support they can get – leading to outputs being randomly distributed. Although github is becoming more of a focus place for outputs, these are typically hosted on the repositories of individual developers to avoid costs. This in turn creates a problem when developers move on or become refocused.
- Developer pool is small. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify developers who can take on the maintenance and further development of outputs when initial developers move on. Developer resources are now often outside the NREN community, creating the need for a more contractual approach to work.
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Aim
The overall aim of this proposal is to move the TERENA community further towards a model where its ideas and outputs relating to software development can be sustained in the most appropriate way. It focuses on some short to medium term objectives to be undertaken within TERENA to support this goal.
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TERENA member NRENs and connected organisations have produced a number of software packages that have now gone into common use in the community. Many of these packages have been declared as “open source” with the appropriate licences. Considerable effort has been made in developing and deploying these packages and there is a non-trivial requirement for ongoing maintenance and support for the packages. In the IT world, nothing is static and software requires constant modification as systems develop around any one component. Many of the packages or systems are relatively small and would not merit substantial administrative overhead in themselves. However there are a number of things that need to be performed to keep the software up to date and viable. Bugs need to be fixed; additional native languages need to be added etc. The software is all NREN related software, but the user community is greater than the NREN connected institutions. It would include independent research institutes as well as the general public.
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Objectives
The following objectives are proposed for a phase 1 project to address this aim. This proposal is not for a solution service for software sustainability but a set of discrete tasks to define what TERENA should be offering in this space.
- Define support models: better define the different support types described as ‘listed’, ‘hosted’, ‘maintained’ and ‘active’ in the diagram at Annex 1 and create proposals for each support type.
- Explore crowd-source funding / decision tools: Explore the opportunities for creating a ‘kickstarter’ type portal for community driven fund gathering, looking at open tools such as Selfstarter or services such as the JISC Elevator approach.
- Improve current hosting: establish a central TERENA space in github or explore alternatives such as a hosted Jira for the TERENA community.
- Explore software maintenance options: look at models to support maintenance more effectively (company contract, and propose a future solution for TERENA.
- Review skills shortage: look at options for TERENA to be more involved in supporting seedcorn initiatives such as working with university students and better relationships with commercial suppliers.
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Workplan [TBD these are just notes on important areas at the moment]
Need to think about what could be achieved in each area for example is objective 2 just a report on options, a test of platforms, a small scale pilot etc?
Work Item 1: Define Support Models
Expected deliverables: defined set of support models and TERENA service role under each one (report). Recommendations for staff training / skills requirements to support these models. Name and logo for service?
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What about auditing roles?
Work Item 2: Explore Crowd-source funding / decision tool / fund management at TERENA
Expected deliverables: download and test functionality of available crowd source tools. Report on findings and how this could be used in a TERENA workflow.
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There would need to be a percentage cut to support TERENA doing this. Would the community be happy with this?
Work Item 3: Improve current hosting offer
Expected deliverables: solution for hosting chosen and existing projects migrated where possible. Templates for contractual arrangements.
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Need to look at what a good solution for this proposal. Is buying a github licence worth it? Assembla? Atlassian tools??
Work Item 4: Explore software maintenance options
Expected deliverables: review of current contractual arrangements and recommendations for future models for software maintenance (report).
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Should we look at a pool of accredited developers (akin to accredited trainers for TRANSITS)? How would this work
Work Item 5: Review skills shortage
Expected deliverables: ??
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Notes from Brook: look at running an event similar to the Google Summer of Code.
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Timescales and Resources
TBD.
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Dependencies and Relationships
Due to the community focus of this proposal, there are natural links to discussions and work taking place elsewhere within TERENA. Some of the obvious links are:
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