NeuroFedora

Summary

The focus of this SIG is to package and support neuroscience and neuroimaging applications, libraries and datasets on Fedora from the next release on. These packages will enable researchers to use Fedora in all aspects of their work from the design of experiments, data collection, data processing/analysis, data modeling and simulations through to visualization and report generation.

Owner

SIGs/NeuroFedora

Name: Igor Gnatenko (ignatenkobrain) Primary Contact
Email: <i.gnatenko.brain@gmail.com>
Name: Morgan Hough (mhough)
Email: <morgan.hough@gmail.com>
Release notes owner:

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 24
Last updated: 2016-01-18
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The goals of the NeuroFedora SIG were developed watching the success of the highly lauded | NeuroDebian project in promoting the usage of free and open source software in the neuroscience community. Their effort has not only provided an easy means for researchers to install packages but it has helped improve the software engineering practices of the community as well as spawn a number of spin off developments in terms of VM images, USB sticks and AMIs that have contributed to both scientific research and education. We hope to use and contribute to the work they have done to improve build systems, test harnesses and quality assurance procedures for the community.

As with any scientifically focused SIG, there will be a great deal of overlap with other SIGs. Like most researchers, we use Python, R and Octave computational environments for both rapid prototyping and established toolboxes. Each of these environments has large ecosystems of packages and toolboxes that are widely used and make up the basis of the Science Spin. We will complement these with the addition of big data and machine learning tools and toolboxes that are of use to all disciplines even though some of these developers are focused on neuroscience and neuroimaging in particular. Finally, scientific literature is more likely to utilize LaTeX for documents which requires its own set of associated tools (TeXLive, BibTeX, etc.). NeuroFedora will be an active contributor to many aspects of the Fedora Scientific community.

Benefit to Fedora

These packages bring potentially thousands of researchers and clinicians into the Fedora community as well as providing the basis for a possible Fedora Spin in the future. There is some overlap in the packages covered that include packages of interest to other SIGs such as Fedora Medical, Fedora SciTech as well as BigData and ML. Researchers are also very likely to use and test systems locally but production runs of analysis are usually managed on clusters using server or cloud instances and as such will see usage across all .

Scope

Proposal owners: Igor Gnatenko, Morgan Hough (mhough)

These are a set of mostly research packages that do not demand any changes from the main distribution. Any potential dependencies not currently available will be packaged and included.

Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- List of deliverables: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)