Making ILRI code open: Software as an

International Public Good

Alan Orth
CKM / RMG / ICT

ILRI Open Access Week Workshop

Nairobi, 23-25 October 2019
Open Source Software in a Nutshell

“Open source software is software with source code

that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.”

― opensource.com
Brief Intro to Open Source Software

• Analogous to open access for publications and data

• “Open source” movement started in the 1970s by
users who wanted to understand, validate, and fix
bugs in the software running on their computers
• Users began collaborating in the open to develop
software and learn from each other
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar published in 1999,
discussed two development methodologies
 Examples of Popular Open Source Software

You are probably already using open source software...

For example: R, MediaWiki (Wikipedia), WordPress, Linux,

VLC, Mozilla Firefox, Android, and Chromium.
Values of Open Source Software

• Transparency and accountability, especially for

governments and publicly funded organizations
• Continuity for users and communities, especially
when data is stored in open data formats
• Independent verification and reproduction of results
• Avoid the “security by obscurity” promised by closed
source software

“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” ― Eric S.

Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1999
Licensing of Open Source Software

• Licenses range in the permissiveness of the rights

given to — or restrictions placed on — the user
• Some parallels with Creative Commons licenses
• Most licenses require giving credit (“attribution”)
• Others require providing access to the source code
under the same license as the original (“share alike”)
• Unlike some Creative Commons licenses, open source
licenses do not prohibit commercial activity
• Popular licenses include the GPL, MIT, and BSD
Guidance for Open Source Software at ILRI

ILRI Open Access/Open Data Implementation Plan 2015–2018

• Released in 2015, revised in 2017
• Plan on CGSpace: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99370
• Section 3.1 recommends using GitHub as the official
repository for ILRI source code
• Section 4.2 recommends using the GNU Public License
version 3.0 (GPLv3)
Open Source Software at ILRI

• ILRI began using GitHub as an institutional repository

for source code in 2011
• Sixty-three projects currently: https://github.com/ilri
• A few highlights:
• CGSpace: https://github.com/ilri/DSpace
• ADGG: https://github.com/ilri/adgg_v2
• Livegene: https://github.com/ilri/livegene
• CLEANED-R: https://github.com/ilri/CLEANED-R
• IMPACT: https://github.com/ilri/IMPACT
• GOBLET: https://github.com/ilri/GOBLET

Talk to me about putting your project here!

Open Source Publishing Best Practices

https://github.com/ilri/dspace-statistics-api
Open Source Publishing Best Practices

• A rich “README” file with:

• Explanation of what the software does
• Requirements for installation and use
• Sample data with tests
• How to cite the software (even better if on CGSpace!)
• Acknowledgement of other software your project is using
• Which license the software is available under
• A “LICENSE” file present in the root of the repository
• A few good examples:
• https://github.com/ilri/csv-metadata-quality
• https://github.com/ilri/dspace-statistics-api
Beyond Source Code

• Releasing source code is an imperative minimum

• Use “social code” workflows on GitHub, like issues,
pull requests, and wikis
• Publicly document progress of work in blog posts,
wikis, mailing lists, etc
• A few examples:
• CGSpace issues: https://github.com/ilri/DSpace/issues
• CGSpace worklog: https://alanorth.github.io/cgspace-notes
• HPC documentation: https://hpc.ilri.cgiar.org
Acknowledgements

Peter Ballantyne for trailblazing “open” at ILRI,

leading to the institutional adoption of Creative
Commons licenses in 2010.

Jane Poole for supporting the use of GitHub and

open source software licenses in research
computing since 2011.
 better lives through livestock

ilri.org
ILRI thanks all donors and organizations which globally support its work through their contributions
to the CGIAR Trust Fund

This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.