POSE: Phase I: Evolving Exosphere with Community-Driven Software Stewardship

该项目由开放源代码生态系统之路（POSE）资助，旨在利用开放源代码开发的力量，为国家和社会重要问题创造新技术解决方案。Exosphere是一个创新的基于web的界面，用于非专有云计算基础设施。Exosphere使研究人员能够使用先进的基于云的研究工具，而无需高级系统管理员技能。该项目的新颖之处包括：提供一个用户友好的仪表板来管理云计算、网络和数据存储资源，并通过web浏览器提供对这些资源的交互式访问。独特的是，Exosphere可以提供对大多数以研究为重点的云系统的访问，而无需定制集成工作。该项目旨在提高研究人员的生产力，减少科学发现的时间。Exosphere通过缩小支持云的研究技术的力量与研究人员可访问性之间的差距来实现这些目标。Exosphere还可以通过分布式车间实现计算素养和劳动力发展。研究人员和社区贡献者以完全公开的开发过程构建Exosphere。他们以免费和开源软件的形式提供结果。这种方法使Exosphere成为Jetstream2（一个全国性的研究云）使用最广泛的接口。它还产生了一些高级特性，如按键式弹性虚拟集群和可复制的数据科学工作台。由于Exosphere与数百家公司和非营利组织使用的OpenStack应用程序编程接口（api）兼容，因此它可以为整个研究社区和其他领域的用例提供服务。来自开源生态系统路径（POSE）项目的第一阶段奖励将支持Exosphere的组织和社区发展活动。这些任务包括通过调查和会议参与来发现用户和贡献者生态系统，与导师合作评估组织和治理模型，以及开发贡献者参与计划、用户文档和网站。成功的结果将是一个充分发展的战略，以增加和维持Exosphere对研究计算和整个社会的好处。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is funded by Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) which seeks to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. Exosphere is an innovative web-based interface for non-proprietary cloud computing infrastructure. Exosphere empowers researchers to wield advanced cloud-based research tools without needing advanced systems administrator skills. The project's novelties include: providing a user-friendly dashboard to manage cloud computing, networking, and data storage resources, and providing interactive access to these resources via web browser. Uniquely, Exosphere can provide access to most research-focused cloud systems without custom integration work. The project seeks to increase the productivity of researchers and reduce the time to scientific discoveries. Exosphere achieves these goals by closing the gap between the power of cloud-enabled research techniques and their accessibility to researchers. Exosphere also enables computational literacy and workforce development with distributed workshops.Investigators and community contributors build Exosphere with a fully public development process. They deliver the result as free and open-source software. This approach has made Exosphere the most widely-used interface for Jetstream2, a national-scale research cloud. It has also resulted in advanced features such as push-button elastic virtual clusters and reproducible data science workbenches. Exosphere can grow to serve use cases across the research community and beyond, as it is compatible with the OpenStack Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) used at hundreds of companies and not-for-profit organizations. A Phase I award from the Pathways for Enabling Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program enables Exosphere’s organizational and community development activities. These tasks include discovery of the user and contributor ecosystem via surveys and engagements at conferences, evaluating organization and governance models in collaboration with mentors, and developing a contributor engagement plan, user documentation, and a website. The successful result will be a fully-developed strategy to multiply and sustain the benefit of Exosphere to research computing and society at large.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.