The HEP Software Foundation

HSF Steering Group Meeting, 10 July 2025

10 Jul 2025 by

Attending

Present/Contributing: Eduardo Rodrigues, Stefan Roiser, Johannes Elmsheuser, Claire Antel, Graeme A Stewart, Torre Wenaus, Liz Sexton-Kennedy, Michel Villanueva, Michel Jouvin, Mark Neubauer

Apologies: Caterina Doglioni

News

EPPSU Paper

Submission to EPJ C is done. (This will be published as an editorial article, with no changes to the content.)

There were some comments about the use of acronyms, which we should define more clearly (or add a glossary), plus a few other technical points. We think these are easy to address - Michel will take a first pass.

Content was generally praised!

Domain Name

IJClab took over the hepsoftwarefoundation.org domain.

This is effectively “infinite” as the lab manages many domain names like this.

ACTION: Michel to have a contact at the lab and pass this on.

Advisory Group Follow-ups

Advertising the HSF

There is an action on Paul and Graeme to follow up w.r.t. advertising the HSF within the collaborations/communities.

We need to draft a text that we can suggest things (still TODO). We thought it would be good to target the new intake of students in the Autumn.

HSF Funding Opportunities and Collaboration

Ongoing investigations of a more formal MoU and independent status. Unfortunately, no progress since the last meeting.

• Still general interest in becoming some sort of association?

• Caterina: the same “introspective” discussion is ongoing in EuCAIF (where the HSF is brought as an example of a very useful organisation!). Personally, I’d start with trying to understand why we want to become a more formal collaboration and what we’d get if we changed from the current do-ocracy / volunteer model. Maybe we start a brainstorming document?

Change of CERN directorate mean that it would be difficult to make progress until next year.

Project Affiliation

An update has been informally proposed for now:

A simple “HSF Affiliated Project” badge, that says the project fulfils the Best Practice guidelines here: https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/projects/guidelines.html and in particular the 9 general guidelines (not the 2 optional ones !).

There seemed to be support for the idea of having more nuanced badges, for having extra user support etc. - maybe we should just start with “implements best practice”, which should be relatively quick.

We also propose to work with the experiments to compile a list of the software packages that are used.

We decided we should make the criteria more flexible and Graeme had a stab at it: https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/pull/1746

• Bronze/silver/gold levels replaced by a single affiliation badge.

ACTION: review and post online asap the new guidelines.

• “Reviews” in progress:
  • NNPDF
  • Should re-start discussions with DIRAC
  • Any other?
    • Positive indications from ACTS, need to ping them to see if they would like to proceed (once simplified scheme is in place); Graeme will do, with Caterina in CC.

HSF representation

• We are regularly asked to present or attend events
  • See list of presentations at https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/organization/presentations.html
  • ACTION: please add anything which is missing
• Most recent invitation is for attendance of the Nov. 2025 ROOT Users workshop.
• These matters are important. How to ensure we have time and budget for it?

WLCG Management Board community software liaison

• The HSF has been having a community software liaison role since a few years
  • Details of WLCG MB: https://wlcg.web.cern.ch/collaboration/management/management-board/members
• Eduardo’s 2-year term ends in August 2025.
• Need a replacement from September on
  • I will attend/report at the September meeting since (1) just after the Summer break, (2) ensure continuity, (3) anyway an RRB report for the past 6 months is due in September
• Proposal for endorsement: Stefan Roiser (CERN) suggested as new liaison for 2 years. There was broad and unanimous support for Stefan to take this role - thank you Stefan!

SG Composition

If you know of someone who is active in community work and shares the HSF’s goals consider inviting them to be on the SG.

HSF/WLCG Workshop

Additional post-mortem points?

Should we have a particular focus on Software Sustainability? It is a popular and very relevant topic, with lots of cross-experiment potential. Would it be useful if the HSF were to solicit a mandate from WLCG for this task? It would need to then be expressed as a concrete time-bound task.

Updates from CD on green/sustainable software:

• summer student started working on list of “green software” resources, we will attempt a pull request when ready (a few weeks to go before that happens)
• EuCAIF Green&Sustainable WG (kick-off: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1547268/) would like to propose some joint seminar topics on FAIR and green AI - will get in touch with seminar organisers
• EVERSE will organise a RSQKit training in the Wednesday seminar slot in November, discussions to start in September

Action:

• Eduardo and Graeme will have a coffee/tea with Simone/WLCG.
  • Done, mandate is clear and forum will start in September (or July 30th? agreed with WLCG earlier on, but probably too early).
• Caterina will have a PR at some point with resources.
  • Not yet done, see above.
• Caterina will get back to Eleonora Parisi (training organiser) to set up a joint webinar with the compute and accelerator forum.
  • Done, see above.
• Have in mind the next Sustainability workshop at the end of this year. Can the HSF contribute in some way?

AOB

Coordination Meetings

As ever… Chairing sign up document.

• Every SG member should really be doing 1+ of these in 1 year, which isn’t that much after all. Expect a ping at some point if you’ve been shy … ;-)

C&AF and Seminars

• Need to progress on properly co-organising these.
• Who takes the lead?
• From CD/GS/ER chat on WLCG environmental sustainability forum: are there any objections to moving seminars, compute & accelerator forum, and WLCG environmental sustainability forum into the same category?
  • Potential category “Joint HSF, WLCG and Compute & Accelerator Forum events” here https://indico.cern.ch/category/11728/ (owned by Stefan?)
    • Agreed to make a move towards CERN/Seminars.

Next Meeting

Not before September. Enjoy the Summer break :)!