This week we learned about the importance of software preservation and how to start contributing to open source projects.

Invited Talk: Software Preservation and Reproducible Research/Data

On Monday, Vicky Steves, who is a data librarian, came and did a guest lecture about software preservation, GLAM, reproducibility of research and how to start contributing to projects. Ms.Steves introduced the indea of reproducable research, and code and it’s connection to open source projects. Repoducibility refers to the ability of data to be analyzed by different parties and still get the same results as the original study. The issues of reproducibility in terms of code or projects causes issues of code not being transferable from on system enviornment to another. Throughout the lecture, Ms.Steves emphesized the importance of good documentation. Having good well-written documentation plays into reproducibility of reseach and makes the lives of researchers much easier. I was not aware of what reproducible data played a big role in open source projects. I learned that reproducibility of data plays a role in software preservation. Prevervation of stat can be seen withing the GLAM communities. GLAM, which stands for “galleries, libraries, archives, and museums,” are communities in which provide access to research and knowledge. GLAM communities preserve and make data accessible to researchers.

During the talk, Ms.Steves disscussed ways we (beginners) can start contributing to open source projects. Being new to the open source world, contributing to someone else’s project can be dounting and scary at first. She provided ways to get involved, for example hacktoberfest. Hacktoberfest is a month-long conpetition/celebration of open source software. The festival encourages hackers to make pull requests for projects they are interested in and eventually contributing to. She also mententioned that we should start by providing documentation to projects. Documetation is a very important part of open source projects. Writting and contributing well-written documentation is a very usuful contribution.

This lecture was very insightful. It introduced me to the world of reproducable software and software preservation.

My Project Evaluations

In the past week I evaluated two projects, Astropy and MPAndroidCHat. These two projects showed me what both a good project looks like and a project I should not get involved with.

The first project I evaluated was Astropy. Astropy is a set of software packages, which are written in Python, that are for the purposes of astronomy. This project is written primarily in Python and is used by astropysists and astronomers. The code was easy to understand and has well-written documentation. The Astropy community is a welcoming community that is open to new contributors. The managers of the project are helpful and are responsive. I could see myself getting involved in a project like this. Although I am not passionant about this specific project, this is a project that could potentially be a good first contribution to an OSSP.

The second project I evaluated was MPAndroidChat. MPAndroidChat is a powerful and easy to use chart library for Andriod. It has an OpenSource version for IOS as well. This particular OSSP is intended for android users. The primary language this project is written in is JAVA. The source code seems easy to read, and easy to follow along to due to documention. However, the community does not seem to reseptive to new contributors. Also, the response time for issues or pull requests is slow. I did not see an active discission on issues. I also had a lot of trouble installing the project. There was not adequete instruction on how to install it and or how to contribute to it. After this assesment, I saw that this project would not make a good first project for me.

Potental Projects…

I am currently unsure of what project I want to work on. I am still searching for a project that I am passionante about and would want to get invovled with. I did really like Astropy. I know python and I could see myself working on/ contributing to this project.