On realizing the concept study ScienceSoft of the European Middleware Initiative: Open Software for Open Science

In September 2011 the European Middleware Initiative (EMI) started discussing the feasibility of creating an open source community for science with other projects like EGI, StratusLab, OpenAIRE, iMarine, and IGE, SMEs like DCore, Maat, SixSq, SharedObjects, communities like WLCG and LSGC. The general idea of establishing an open source community dedicated to software for scientific applications was understood and appreciated by most people. However, the lack of a precise definition of goals and scope is a limiting factor that has also made many people sceptical of the initiative. In order to understand more precisely what such an open source initiative should do and how, EMI has started a more formal feasibility study around a concept called ScienceSoft - Open Software for Open Science. A group of people from interested parties was created in December 2011 to be the ScienceSoft Steering Committee with the short-term mandate to formalize the discussions about the initiative and produce a document with an initial high-level description of the motivations, issues and possible solutions and a general plan to make it happen. The conclusions of the initial investigation were presented at CERN in February 2012 at a ScienceSoft Workshop organized by EMI. Since then, presentations of ScienceSoft have been made in various occasions, in Amsterdam in January 2012 at the EGI Workshop on Sustainability, in Taipei in February at the ISGC 2012 conference, in Munich in March at the EGI/EMI Conference and at OGF 34 in March. This paper provides information this concept study ScienceSoft as an overview distributed to the broader scientific community to critique it.