As the reach and impact of open-source software continue to grow, the ability to assess and improve the long-term sustainability of open-source software projects is paramount. This talk describes the Kitware Software Sustainability Matrix (SSM), a simple set of metrics designed to evaluate the sustainability of software projects and indicate ways to improve. By examining key values—Impact, Risks, Community, and Technology—we provide a structured approach to assess and enhance software sustainability. Kitware has been involved in open-source software production for over 25 years. We are continuing to develop and understand the key drivers that allow for software to be maintained for the long term. We are working with CORSA to help develop scorecards for the Software Stewardship Organizations (SSOs). Additionally, we have partnered with organizations such as the University of Utah to improve the impacts of their software systems and ensure they remain vital into the future. In this presentation, we will describe the SSM and other efforts to measure and evaluate sustainability. We will also present use cases to demonstrate our progress in this area.
Presenters
- Bill Hoffman (Kitware, Inc.)
- Will Schroeder (Kitware, Inc.)
Presenter Bios
Bill Hoffman is a founder of Kitware and currently serves as Chairman of the Board, Vice President, and Chief Technical Officer (CTO). He is the original author and lead architect of CMake, an open-source, cross-platform build and configuration tool that is used by hundreds of projects around the world, and he is the co-author of the accompanying text, Mastering CMake. Using his 20+ years of experience with large software systems development, Mr. Hoffman is also a major technical contributor to Kitware’s Visualization Toolkit (VTK), Insight Toolkit (ITK), and ParaView projects. As CTO, Mr. Hoffman’s emphasis is on software development methodologies and establishing best practices across the breadth of Kitware’s development efforts.
Will Schroeder, Ph.D., is a co-founder of Kitware and served as its CEO for 19 years. His current role as Opportunity Catalyst is to identify technology and business opportunities and obtain the necessary support for Kitware to meet these opportunities. As first author of the Visualization Toolkit textbook, he remains a key contributor to the VTK community, focusing on high-performance visualization and computational geometry algorithms. He has also led several additional large-scale software projects such as ITK and the NA-MIC (National Alliance for Medical Image Computing). Dr. Schroeder is an advocate for open science, and open source software and business models. Recently he has focused on software sustainability and partnered with the University of Utah to help improve the impact of their open source software.