Software Sustainability

Software is not static. New functionality is needed, hardware evolves, staff come and go and sources of funding change. This makes the world of software a volatile place — something that can be seen in the number of software packages that fail to gain a market. This year, a group of experts came together to form the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). Our goal is to help software survive in this volatile world.

Evolution — the survival of the fittest — is very effective at determining what software needs to succeed. But in this cruel world, some software appears unfit only because it was developed by a project that lacks expertise in certain specialized areas.

Some projects develop highly innovative software, but it lacks the polish gained from professional software development. Other projects have developed software that is hugely successful within a small community, but unknown outside. These reasons can prevent software from reaching its full potential, and can even cause a software project to fail. That’s where the Software Sustainability Institute comes in: we provide the expertise that software projects need to succeed.

The Software Sustainability Institute brings together experts in software architecture and development, project management, community building and publicity. These skills are often fundamental to sustainability yet they are difficult to retain in all but the largest academic projects. We work with projects, either as collaborators or consultants, and help with improving the quality, usability and maintainability of the software, developing the software’s community, publicizing the software’s successes and planning its future development. SSI also provides a range of free and paid-for services. We also work with funders and other international organizations to better understand how to support software in the long-term.

We help more than just the projects that work with us directly. Through our work, we will build up a catalog of experience and know-how about the problems that are faced by many software projects. We will make this knowledge freely available on our website in the form of guides, tutorials, self assessments and blog posts. We will also run a conference in early 2011: the Collaborations Workshop, which will focus on bringing together researchers, developers and funding representatives. Keep an eye on the Software Sustainability Institute’s website for dates and registration details.

The Software Sustainability Institute only kicked off in June this year, but we’ve already amassed a number of important collaborators. We’re helping to visualize nuclear plasmas with the Culham Center for Fusion Energy, improve climate modeling with the Tyndall Center and the WorldWide Fund for Nature, and sustaining software used for diagnosing severe brain conditions with the Brain Imaging Research Center. In addition to these large projects, we have worked for shorter periods with a number of research groups and held workshops and consultancies.

We’re always looking for new projects and software to work with.                   

—Simon Hettrick, Software Sustainability Institute