Posted for Giacomo Peru (EPCC, University of Edinburgh):
As a ‘lapsed classicist’, and on behalf of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) at the University of Edinburgh, for whom I now work, I would like if I may to draw your attention to a petition, launched by SSI, which seeks to assert the fundamental importance of software to today’s research:
http://bit.ly/SoftwareIsFundamental
and on Twitter:
Software is fundamental to research! If you agree, sign our petition: http://t.co/pS46gZuZcI
— SSI – software.ac.uk (@SoftwareSaved) October 15, 2014
I would like to ask a few minutes of your attention to read the petition and, if you agree, to sign it.
Perhaps because software is intangible, we have become accustomed to focussing on only the hardware that makes research possible. But with very few exceptions, every significant advance in research over the last thirty years would have been impossible without software. I would like to see these advances continue, but that won’t happen if the research community overlooks the role of software.
Thank you and best regards.