The tragic death of open source research software

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.title[
# The tragic death of open source research software
]
.subtitle[
## Fast forward Open Science - 22 October 2025
]
.author[
### Laurent Gatto - UCLouvain
]
.date[
### <a href="https://lgatto.github.io/death-research-software/" class="uri">https://lgatto.github.io/death-research-software/</a>
]

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## Research software has become an central player in scientific research.

## It can also be a single point of failure.

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# Use case

???

Imagine that 6 months ago, you, a brilliant and motivated early career
researcher in biomedical sciences, defined the ideal experiment to
answer an important biological question in your domain.

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##   Experimental design + data + software = results

???

After several months of hard work and thousands of euros of
consumables, you have acquired the precious data.

You have even identified a research paper that tackles a similar
question using exactly the same technology and type of data. That
paper describes a data analysis method and published a piece of
software that are ideally suited to answer your question with your
data.

You have generated good quality data and found the right software.

### Your results are at arm's length, aren't they?

--
### What could go wrong?

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# Software death
# Software collapse
# Software rot

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### Software collapse is the fact that software will stop working at some point if is not *actively maintained*.

### -> Where is the software?

### -> The software doesn't work ...

### -> The software "works" but ...

???

- The software isn't available (anymore).
- The software is available, but it can't be installed.
- The software can be installed, but it doesn't work.
- The software "works" on test data , but you can't get it to run on
  your data.
- The software "runs" with your data, but the results don't make any
  sense.
- ...

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# Making software survive longer

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# Making software survive longer

- **Administration**: intellectual property, author- and copyrights,
funding obligations, licencing, ...
- Choose an **open source**: license to **publish** your software and
  **archive** it.
- **Development**: modularity, testing, continuous integration,
  traceability and reproducibility, version control, re-use existing
  and robust infrastructure, ...
- **Software life cycle**: maintenance, new features, ending, pausing,
    or handing off.
- User and developer **communities**
- **Use(rs)**: eat your own dog food, documentation**s**.
- **Training**: as part of a curiculum or through workshops [The
  Carpentries](https://carpentries.org/), [Galaxy
  training](https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/),
  [ELIXIR training
  platform](https://elixir-europe.org/platforms/training), [Learning
  and teaching in the Bioconductor
  community](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012925),
  ...
- **Incentives**, recognition, career path and funding ([SSI Research
  Software Maintenance
  Fund](https://www.software.ac.uk/programmes/research-software-maintenance-fund),
  CZI's [EOSS](https://chanzuckerberg.com/eoss/)).

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# Take home messages

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## Your results are only as good as the method and the software you use. Without decent software, there's hardly any trustworthy science.

## This means that we need to offer the opportunities and support for developers to develop, release and maintain their scientific software.

???

There are many actors that can and should support software:
researchers, of course, but also their institutions, funders,
publishers and libraries.

---
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# References

-   [Dealing With Software Collapse](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8701540). Hinsen K. (2019)
-   [10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job](https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06484). Littauer R
    et al. (2025).
-   [For long-term sustainable software in bioinformatics](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011920). Coelho
    LP. (2024).
-   [Ten simple rules for making research software more robust](https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005412). Taschuk
    and Wilson (2017).
-   [CODE beyond FAIR](https://hal.science/hal-04930405v1). Di Cosmo et al. (2025).

This talk: https://lgatto.github.io/death-research-software/