BrainBrowser for the People
Preparing Software for Open Source Development
Tarek Sherif
McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience
What is BrainBrowser?
- JavaScript library for neurological data visualization
- Began as an application in April 2010
- Refactored into reusable library in 2013
- Open sourced in March 2014
Why Open Source?
-
More sustainable long-term
- Lighter financially
- Knowledge about the software is shared
- Researchers trust code they can audit
-
Learn what people want
- And have them contribute the changes!
- More eyes on the code
How do you get there?
- Choose the right license
- Make your code accessible
- Let people know about your project
The License
-
BSD/MIT
- Have to give credit, but not much else
-
GPL
- Have contribute changes back if software is re-released
-
Affero GPL
- Have contribute changes back if software is deployed on the Web
-
Be aware of compatibility issues
- Incompatible licenses can prevent software or libraries from being used together
- Go with a known license
Accessible Code
- Clean code base
- Documentation
- Tests
Cleaning the code base
-
Consistent style
- Code should be readable
- Create a style guide!
- No unnecessary files
- Directory structure reflects structure of software
- BFG Repo-Cleaner (for Git)
Cleaning the code base
Documentation
Help people get up to speed
- API documentation
- Tutorials
- Sample applications
Documentation
Documentation Generators
- Let you comment your code and write docs at the same time
- BrainBrowser Documentation Comments
- Generated API Documentation
Testing
- Provide something that lets contributors know they're not breaking anything
- Automated test are ideal, but there are other options
Testing
Testing in BrainBrowser
- Graphics applications are hard to test automatically
- BrainBrowser has some unit tests
- Most testing is done with example apps that use all functionality
Raising Awareness
No contributors if no one knows about your project!
-
Scientific publication
- If the project is mature enough
-
Connecting to developers can start earlier
- Interested in the technologies being used
- Many of our projects are unusual uses of their component technologies
Raising Awareness
- Hackathons
- Meetups
- Social media
Hackathons
- Developers get see and use each other's code and software
- Walk people through how to use it
- Find out what the pain points are for users
-
Ideally in your field
- But not necessarily!
Meetups
- Many cities have tech meetups
- People are often interested in novel uses of languages, tools, etc.
- Spread the word and talk to talented developers
Social Media
- Find groups related to field, technologies you use
- Or just write to people or blogs that might be interested
-
For BrainBrowser, we found groups related the following topics to be very receptive:
- Neurology
- Open Science
- WebGL, HTML5, JavaScript