On The Rise of a Community of a Community Radar Software Packages

Everyone who presents at the 2017 AMS Radar Conference will have used radar software in one form or another. Such software aids our productivity in using the data collected by radars to derive scientific insight; software can also be a source of frustration. Until recently, the field of radar processing software (as distinct from software used to operate radar systems) has evolved slowly with only a small number of scientists being active. Recently, the diversity of both packages and paradigms has increased dramatically.

With the advent of social coding on platforms such as Bitbucket and GitHub, software projects have become larger than what is normally sustainable by a single developer, institution or even agency. This presentation will provide a comprehensive picture of the state of open source radar software. Key aspects of the major systems, as well as their underlying philosophies, will be covered as well as, since this is a radar conference, some science highlights from each package together with the blossoming ecosystem of dependent packages.