The HEP Software Foundation is delighted to support and promote community software for high-energy physics. Here we describe how we can help projects gain greater visibility and enhance the positive impact of their software.
HSF Affiliated Projects and Software are community-driven and community-oriented “endeavours” or “products” of wide and recognised interest and applicability beyond a single collaboration or experiment.
HSF Affiliated Projects and Software are community projects or software packages with person-power, and possibly dedicated funding, which connect strongly to the HSF and align with its goals. They benefit from their inclusion in, or association with, the HSF through access to the community for wide visibility and easier promotion through the network. Affiliation makes it clear that the HSF has no direct control over the endeavours/products, hence no responsibility for evolution or maintenance.
Projects are hosted on their own public platform of choice (such as GitHub); they may use the HSF GitHub repository if desired and mutually agreed with the HSF Steering Group.
Anyone is welcome to engage with the HSF in general and the HSF Steering Group (SG), in particular to discuss the route towards making a software project or package an HSF Affiliated Project or Software. This can be an informal discussion initially.
Formal endorsement is provided by the HSF SG following a short evaluation period in consultation with the relevant HSF Working Group conveners and community experts. For transparency, these evaluations (start, scope and end) are advertised publicly via the HSF Forum, the HSF’s main means of communication.
The list of HSF Affiliated Projects and Software is hosted in a dedicated area on the HSF website, curated and maintained by the HSF SG.
The recognition of bijective engagement with the HSF is displayed via GitHub Badges. Three levels distinguish mainly the level of maturity, community support and engagement: Bronze, Silver and Gold. In broad terms, the attribution of the endorsement level is based on the following guidelines, which are detailed in the dedicated document on Guidelines for HSF Affiliated Projects and Software, and Endorsement Badge Levels.
The HSF envisages a scheme for Annual Project Awards. A concrete proposal will be presented to the HSF Advisory Group once the latter is put in place.
They are detailed in the document Guidelines for HSF Affiliated Projects and Software.
The HSF can organise informal reviews of community projects upon request. Such reviews bring together a group of experts from the community to assess all aspects of a project or software, from requirements to implementation: code, packaging, documentation, etc.
The reviews are organised by the HSF SG in consultation with relevant Working Group conveners. For transparency, these reviews (start, scope and end) are advertised publicly via the HSF Forum, the HSF’s main means of communication, and the results are made public.
The HSF encourages finding common solutions to common problems for the benefit of the community.
An HSF Project or Software can be realised in practice as a Reference Implementation (RI). An HSF RI for a common problem shall be described via a White Paper defining the problem and the general idea of the solution; the implementation itself will be documented via standard documentation means. The White Paper should solicit input from the whole community, via meetings advertised through the HSF, to make sure the definition of the problem is commonly agreed.
Where there is a problem domain in the field that has not been studied from a general perspective, the HSF can organise a group of experts to formulate the requirements to solve the problem and to later facilitate the development of a reference implementation. In the first phase, experts from multiple experiments and communities should undertake a process of writing a White Paper, with wide community consultation and endorsement, which describes the problem to be solved in terms of specific and concrete requirements. The requirements can then be used as the basis for a public API specification, to which specific solutions should adhere to. The HSF can facilitate the development of solutions, which will become an Affiliated Project or Software irrespective of the concrete circumstances and sources of effort and funding. The model for this process was the development of the conditions database used by sPHENIX, as developed by the BNL NPPS group, following the problem definition developed in the HSF Conditions Database Working Group arXiv:2401.16274.
Please refer to the document HSF letters on the website. The HSF continues to provide letters on the same basis.
The HSF is a community organisation with no internal source of funding. It runs as a do-ocracy. In the spirit that the HSF facilitates cooperation and common efforts in HEP software and computing internationally, the HSF envisages facilitating the availability of modest financial support for community colleagues to travel and present at important events. This is inspired, broadly speaking, by the concept of NumFOCUS Affiliated Projects. The HSF will highlight external funding opportunities available for software projects.
Entities interested in acting as Sponsors make themselves known to the HSF SG stating the level of funding they will make available per annum, and for what type of activity(ies) - e.g., presentation of a software package by an Early Career Scientist at a major conference, travel support for a seminar. The HSF SG curates the list of Sponsors on the website, displaying the requirements to be met by each Sponsor. The HSF will not be in charge of financial transactions, it will merely serve as a mediator.
Entities can be any moral entity or persons.
The HSF does not envisage delivering a programme of software development grants or any grants of any kind. It also cannot accept direct donations, which should rather be made available via a sponsor’s funding opportunity.
The HSF may re-assess its indirect funding scheme at any time and the SG welcomes feedback on this new initiative.