I had a conversation today with Kate Storey-Fisher (NYU) about the software she is writing in our large-scale structure projects. One question is whether to develop on a fork of another project, or to bring in code from another project and work in our own project?
My view on this is complicated. I am a big believer in open-source software and building community projects. But I am also a believer that science and scientific projects have to have clear authorship: Authorship is part of giving and getting credit, part of taking responsibility for your work and decisions, and part of the process of criticism that is essential to science (in its current form now). So we left this question open; we didn't decide.
But my thoughts about the right thing to do depend on many factors, like: Is this code an important part of your scientific output, or is it a side project? Do you expect to write a paper about this code? Do you expect or want this code to be used by others?
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