The Astropy Problem
Abstract
The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.03159,
title = {The Astropy Problem},
author = {Demitri Muna and Michael Alexander and Alice Allen and Richard Ashley and Daniel Asmus and Ruyman Azzollini and Michele Bannister and Rachael Beaton and Andrew Benson and G. Bruce Berriman and Maciej Bilicki and Peter Boyce and Joanna Bridge and Jan Cami and Eryn Cangi and Xian Chen and Nicholas Christiny and Christopher Clark and Michelle Collins and Johan Comparat and Neil Cook and Darren Croton and Isak Delberth Davids and Éric Depagne and John Donor and Leonardo A. dos Santos and Stephanie Douglas and Alan Du and Meredith Durbin and Dawn Erb and Daniel Faes and J. G. Fernández-Trincado and Anthony Foley and Sotiria Fotopoulou and Søren Frimann and Peter Frinchaboy and Rafael Garcia-Dias and Artur Gawryszczak and Elizabeth George and Sebastian Gonzalez and Karl Gordon and Nicholas Gorgone and Catherine Gosmeyer and Katie Grasha and Perry Greenfield and Rebekka Grellmann and James Guillochon and Mark Gurwell and Marcel Haas and Alex Hagen and Daryl Haggard and Tim Haines and Patrick Hall and Wojciech Hellwing and Edmund Christian Herenz and Samuel Hinton and Renee Hlozek and John Hoffman and Derek Holman and Benne Willem Holwerda and Anthony Horton and Cameron Hummels and Daniel Jacobs and Jens Juel Jensen and David Jones and Arna Karick and Luke Kelley and Matthew Kenworthy and Ben Kitchener and Dominik Klaes and Saul Kohn and Piotr Konorski and Coleman Krawczyk and Kyler Kuehn and Teet Kuutma and Michael T. Lam and Richard Lane and Jochen Liske and Diego Lopez-Camara and Katherine Mack and Sam Mangham and Qingqing Mao and David J. E. Marsh and Cecilia Mateu and Loïc Maurin and James McCormac and Ivelina Momcheva and Hektor Monteiro and Michael Mueller and Roberto Munoz and Rohan Naidu and Nicholas Nelson and Christian Nitschelm and Chris North and Juan Nunez-Iglesias and Sara Ogaz and Russell Owen and John Parejko and Vera Patrício and Joshua Pepper and Marshall Perrin and Timothy Pickering and Jennifer Piscionere and Richard Pogge and Radek Poleski and Alkistis Pourtsidou and Adrian M. Price-Whelan and Meredith L. Rawls and Shaun Read and Glen Rees and Hanno Rein and Thomas Rice and Signe Riemer-Sørensen and Naum Rusomarov and Sebastian F. Sanchez and Miguel Santander-García and Gal Sarid and William Schoenell and Aleks Scholz and Robert L. Schuhmann and William Schuster and Peter Scicluna and Marja Seidel and Lijing Shao and Pranav Sharma and Aleksandar Shulevski and David Shupe and Cristóbal Sifón and Brooke Simmons and Manodeep Sinha and Ian Skillen and Bjoern Soergel and Thomas Spriggs and Sundar Srinivasan and Abigail Stevens and Ole Streicher and Eric Suchyta and Joshua Tan and O. Grace Telford and Romain Thomas and Chiara Tonini and Grant Tremblay and Sarah Tuttle and Tanya Urrutia and Sam Vaughan and Miguel Verdugo and Alexander Wagner and Josh Walawender and Andrew Wetzel and Kyle Willett and Peter K. G. Williams and Guang Yang and Guangtun Zhu and Andrea Zonca},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.03159},
year = {2016}
}