We are going free and open source!

Authors: Roel Janssen, Egbert Grams­ber­gen, Madeleine de Smaele, Mar­ta Teperek, Iulia Popes­cu

We are very pleased to announce that 4TU.ResearchData is tak­ing the strate­gic choice to go free and open source! We are plan­ning to go live with our in-house devel­oped open source soft­ware repos­i­to­ry in March this year.

Motivations for going open source

Almost three years ago, we pro­cured figshare as the repos­i­to­ry soft­ware to run 4TU.ResearchData. We were pleased with the func­tion­al­i­ties which figshare offered as well as with the qual­i­ty of the sup­port avail­able.

How­ev­er, in the past few years 4TU.ResearchData has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly invest­ing in build­ing an active com­mu­ni­ty of researchers and sup­port staff around its data repos­i­to­ry. Our com­mu­ni­ty is increas­ing­ly tech-savvy and start­ed com­ing up with strong wish­es to make improve­ments to the soft­ware oper­at­ing 4TU.ResearchData, or even propos­ing co-devel­op­ment of new solu­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the use of pro­pri­etary soft­ware made it impos­si­ble for us to embrace the wish of the com­mu­ni­ty to shape the tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment of 4TU.ResearchData.

Fur­ther­more, we came to realise that only by facil­i­tat­ing com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven devel­op­ment, we can work towards sus­tain­able infra­struc­tures, which are agile and able to quick­ly respond to chang­ing com­mu­ni­ty needs. In oth­er words, by co-devel­op­ing and part­ner­ing with the research com­mu­ni­ty, we invest in solu­tions which are val­ued and need­ed.

Last­ly, 4TU.ResearchData, as well as all its insti­tu­tion­al mem­bers, sup­port Open Sci­ence and many have their own Open Sci­ence Pro­grammes run­ning at their home insti­tu­tions. So it is time to walk the walk and to make sure that the tools we are using to run our infra­struc­ture are open as well. This is also impor­tant from the per­spec­tive of our dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty.

Hence, with unan­i­mous sup­port of the Board of 4TU.ResearchData, we have tak­en a strate­gic deci­sion to move to free and open source soft­ware.

Why not re-use?

The log­i­cal move, in the spir­it of open sci­ence, would be to re-use and adapt an exist­ing open source soft­ware. How­ev­er, giv­en the unique fea­tures that make the 4TU.ResearchData repos­i­to­ry, none of the exist­ing solu­tions turned out to be a good fit. There­fore have incre­men­tal­ly imple­ment­ed a repos­i­to­ry sys­tem from back­ward-com­pat­i­bil­i­ty lay­er towards the next 4TU.ResearchData repos­i­to­ry sys­tem. 

In con­clu­sion, we have devel­oped a repos­i­to­ry soft­ware, which we named Dje­huty, after an Egypt­ian god who invent­ed writ­ing. 

Where are we now?

Well… in a bit more than a year spent devel­op­ing the soft­ware, we are almost ready to go. We are plan­ning to go into pro­duc­tion in March this year. 

In the mean­time:

• The code is open source since June 30, 2022: https://github.com/4TUResearchData/djehuty   
• Test ver­sion is avail­able (and has been test­ed): https://next.data.4tu.nl/portal 
• At the time of writ­ing the soft­ware project counts 1714 com­mits done by 7 peo­ple of which 4 are mem­bers of the 4TU.ResearchData tech­ni­cal team. 

Teamwork

Final­ly, we want­ed to stress that all this would not have been pos­si­ble with­out a team and sup­port of numer­ous col­leagues:

• The 4TU.ResearchData tech­ni­cal team: Roel Janssen (senior devel­op­er), Madeleine de Smaele (repos­i­to­ry man­ag­er), Egbert Grams­ber­gen (data engi­neer), Kees den Hei­jer (for­mer team mem­ber), Ardi Non­hebel (for­mer team mem­ber)
• Our com­mu­ni­ty man­agers and com­mu­ni­ty coor­di­na­tors: Alessan­dra Soro (com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er) and Con­nie Clare (for­mer com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er)
• Con­trib­u­tors to the code base out­side of the tech­ni­cal team: Fred­erique Bel­liard, Arie Braat, Cathe­ri­na Vaen­del
• Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who were par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­er­ous with their feed­back and sup­port: Gior­dano Lipari, Serkan Gir­gin, Ash­ley Cryan, Heather Andrews, Jose Urra, all data stew­ards from TU Delft, TU/e, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente, WUR, DCC team at TU Delft, col­leagues from ICT Inno­va­tion depart­ment at TU Delft
• The Board of 4TU.ResearchData who unan­i­mous­ly sup­port­ed com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven, free and open source devel­op­ment as the strate­gic direc­tion for 4TU.ResearchData: Hubert Krekels, Irene Haslinger, Alas­tair Dun­ning, Wil­jan Put­ten­stein, Wendy Ginkel, Mar­jolein Dohmen-Janssen, Iza Witkows­ka (ex-Board mem­ber), Mar­jolein Drent (ex-Board mem­ber)
• The Man­age­ment Team of the TU Delft Library which hosts us and who trust­ed us from the start and empow­ered us to exper­i­ment and inno­vate: Irene Haslinger, Alas­tair Dun­ning, Karin Clav­el, Ingrid Klok
• ICT col­leagues from all part­ner insti­tu­tions: Arie van Nis­tel­rooij, Joost Bengsch, Mark Schenk, Lolke Boon­stra, Peter van Boheemen, Willem Oost­ing, Hyeokjin Kwon, And­jela Tom­ic, Hen­dri Hon­dorp, Inge­borg Ahlers
• 4TU.ResearchData non-tech­ni­cal team: Jan van der Heul, Eric Rumon­dor, Iulia Popes­cu, Paula Mar­tinez Lavanchy, Car­los Utril­la Guer­rero, Zita Bern­hoeft, Deirdre Casel­la (ex-mem­ber)
• Col­leagues from Zen­o­do and Dryad teams, who gave us crit­i­cal feed­back when we need­ed it most: Tra­cy Teal, Daniel­la Lowen­berg, Tim Smith, Jose Ben­i­to Gon­za­lez Lopez, Lars Holm Nielsen, Alex Ioan­ni­dis
• Oth­er col­leagues who sup­port­ed our work and engaged in help­ful dis­cus­sions with us: Sarah Jones

And many, many oth­ers!

Stay tuned to hear more about Dje­huty, an offi­cial announce­ment will fol­low short­ly.