I’m happy to share with you my position on Open Source Software (OSS) development within the context of climate research as featured on the OSS for climate podcast (as part of the Sustain OSS initiative).
https://ossforclimate.sustainoss.org/3
Here, I explain some of my positions on the topic off OSS development, given a decade of experience developing R packages which are currently used by over 250K users. These users cover enthousiast to government data scientists providing operational code.
My one take home message is that OSS is generally a gift from a developer. The developer has some responsibility toward the user, but the user also has a responsibility toward the developer and community. OSS is free, but not gratis.
This is in part echoed in our consulting statement, where we state that we will fix software bugs for free, but research advice comes at a cost. This clearly outlines where my responsibilities end and those of the user start.
