Don’t Fund Software That Doesn’t Exist

Author: Andreas Mueller

I’ve been happy to see an increase in funding for open source software across research areas and across funding bodies. However, I observed that a majority of funding from, say, the NSF, goes to projects that do not exist yet, and where the funding is supposed to create a new project, or to extend projects that are developed and used within a single research lab. I think this top-down approach to creating software comes from a misunderstanding of the existing open source software that is used in science. This post collects thoughts on the effectiveness of current grant-based funding and how to improve it from the perspective of the grant-makers.

Instead of the current approach of funding new projects, I would recommend funding existing open source software, ideally software that is widely used, underfunded and already using peer-production as its organizational principle.

Read the full post on Andreas’ blog:
Andreas Mueller’s post: Don’t fund software that doesn’t exist