Fermilab Software Tools Program: Fermitools
The Fermilab Software Tools Program (Fermitools) was established in 1994 as an intiative under which Fermilab provides software it has developed to outside collaborators. During the year and a half since its start ten software products have been packaged and made available on the official Fermilab anonymous ftp site, and backup support and information services have been made available for them. During the past decade, institutions outside the Fermilab physics experiment user community have in general only been able to obtain and use Fermilab developed software on an adhoc or informal basis. With the Fermitools program the Fermilab Computing Division has instituted an umbrella under which software that is regarded by its internal user community as useful and of high quality can be provided to users outside of High Energy Physics experiments. The main thrust of the Fermitools program is stimulating collaborative use and further development of the software. Having established minimal umbrella beaurocracy makes collaborative development and support easier. The published caveat given to people who take the software includes the statement ``Provision of the software implies no commitment of support by Fermilab. The Fermilab Computing Division is open to discussing other levels of support for use of the software with responsible and committed users and collaborator``. There have been no negative comments in response to this and the policy has not given rise to any questions or complaints. In this paper we present the goals and strategy of the program and introduce some of the software made available through it. We discuss our experiences to date and mention the perceived benefits of the Program.
- Research Organization:
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH03000
- OSTI ID:
- 171369
- Report Number(s):
- FNAL/C-95/327; CONF-9509237-9; ON: DE96002622
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: CHEP `95: computing in high energy physics, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), 18-22 Sep 1995; Other Information: PBD: Oct 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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