Minutes from the SG meeting from Oct. 2nd, 2025 (#1761)

* Minutes from the SG meeting from Oct. 2nd, 2025

* A few updates and clarifications

---------

Co-authored-by: Graeme Andrew Stewart <[email protected]>

Author: eduardo-rodrigues

organization/_posts/2025/2025-10-02-steering.md

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+---
+title: "HSF Steering Group Meeting, 2 October 2025"
+layout: plain_toc
+---
+
+## Attending
+
+Present/Contributing: Eduardo Rodrigues, Caterina Doglioni, Graeme Stewart, Claire Antel, Michel Jouvin, Johannes Elmsheuser, Liz Sexton-Kennedy, Torre Wenaus, Stefan Roiser, Michel Hernandez Villanueva
+
+Apologies: Mark Neubauer, Pere Mato
+
+## News
+
+### CERN LPCC Monte Carlo Working Group meeting
+
+HSF got invited to contribute to the session “Sustainability of the MC toolchain” with a 15 min presentation. Need to find speaker urgently since the session is precisely a week from today (2 October).
+
+Eduardo has asked Sapta as it would be good to get someone from the HSF event generator group. Andrea Valassi could be a backup.
+
+- Update post meeting: Sapta agreed to prepare and deliver the talk. Thank you Sapta!
+
+### EPPSU Paper
+
+Status of submission to EPJ C: referee suggested addition of a glossary. TBD asap whether we add it or not.
+
+ACTION: Michel to reply back to the referee consulting with Graeme. The journal have provided proofs already and asked for some technical corrections.
+
+### Idea to create a bibtex repository
+
+One often needs to dig out the same references over and over again, be it for HSF workshop proceedings or some software related document/paper.
+
+Eduardo suggests to create a "BiblioHEP" repository and populate with some of the citations content he already has (e.g., the PyHEP 2024.dev 2024 report). Do people think this is a good idea?
+
+- People in general happy with the idea.
+- ACTION: Eduardo to create a little repo with some material he already has, and circulate it.
+
+Note: doing this was also proposed after the Software Citation Workshop in 2022 (<https://indico.cern.ch/event/1211229/>), so excellent to finally take some action.
+
+### Domain Name
+
+IJClab took over the `hepsoftwarefoundation.org` domain. This is effectively "infinite" as the lab manages many domain names like this.
+
+ACTION: Michel to have a contact at the lab and pass this on.
+
+## Advisory Group Follow-ups
+
+### Advertising the HSF
+
+There is an action on Paul and Graeme to follow up w.r.t. advertising the HSF within the collaborations/communities.
+
+We thought it would be good to target the new intake of students in the Autumn.
+
+- ACTION : we need to draft a text that we can suggest things (still TODO, to be chased). Graeme will do a first draft with Eduardo to check.
+
+## HSF Budget
+
+The HSF has no funding source but does have a little pot of money from which it receives from the GSoC programme that's been running for several years. This budget has been used to sponsor for example coffee/tea breaks at training events.
+
+Eduardo has discussed the budget and practicalities with  EP-SFT management. We will continue to receive 50% of GSoC stipends and a spreadsheet has been shared with us (via the SG chair) to manage the budget.
+
+For vote: the SG should feel free to use the budget to help meeting costs of in-person events, and also to help with travel expenses, say when the HSF is invited to participate/present in some event, be it a SG member of an AA convener.
+
+For vote: (self-)requests for spends on this HSF budget  will be dealt with via the SG chair. The SG will be informed of any request/spend for transparency, and will have the right to veto a request. To make the process as straightforward as possible a SG member will be asked at random to collect the votes (only vetoes are needed, in practice) and inform the chair of the consensus.
+
+- Procedure well received and agreed.
+
+## HSF Funding Opportunities and Collaboration
+
+Ongoing investigations of a more formal MoU and independent status. Unfortunately no progress since the last meeting.
+
+- Still general interest in becoming some sort of association?
+
+- Caterina: the same "introspective" discussion is ongoing in EuCAIF (where the HSF is brought as an example of a very useful organisation!). Personally, I'd start with trying to understand why we want to become a more formal collaboration and what we'd get if we changed from the current do-ocracy / volunteer model. Maybe we start a brainstorming document? Proposal: postpone full discussion to next year.
+
+Change of CERN directorate mean that it would be difficult to make progress until next year anyway. Michel proposes that we have a chat with the future Director for Research and Computing.
+
+## Project Affiliation and Affiliated
+
+We have proposed to work with the experiments to compile a list of the software packages that are used. Who wants to make this happen?
+
+### Ongoing
+
+- Status of evaluations:
+  - nnpdf finalised over the Summer - nice!
+  - Exchanges with the DIRAC team advanced well and 2 reviewers have been identified. The evaluation is WIP and will be finalised once the DIRAC team gets out of a string of events.
+  - NoPayloadDB Conditions Database maintainers expressed their interest. We need to find 1-2 reviewers ... names please :)!
+
+ACTION: Eduardo to add the GDoc template to the site to make it easy for everyone to understand the review process in practical terms.
+
+### Prospective affiliates
+
+**ACTS**: from past minutes - since we need to engage ACTS in RSQKit feedback (with a dedicated person helping the implementation of best practices, so it's not extra work for them), should we do HSF project affiliation in parallel? If yes, send me (CD) the name of the developer who expressed interest + if you'd like to be in cc, and I'll organise chats that take care of both. 
+
+Update (not yet discussed with Graeme): ACTS is happy to be on board, with EVERSE RSQKit editorial board member working with CD (Michael Sparks) doing a first pass "does ACTS satisfy the HSF criteria and what is missing", then have a discussion in their developers meeting, and then they'll email the HSF for official evaluation. 
+
+## HSF representation
+
+- We are regularly asked to present or attend events
+  - See list of presentations at <https://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/organization/presentations.html>.
+  - ACTION for all: please add anything which is missing.
+- Most recent invitation is for attendance of the [Nov. 2025 ROOT Users workshop](https://cern.ch/root2025).
+
+## WLCG Management Board community software liaison
+
+NTR.
+
+## SG Composition
+
+If you know of someone who is active in community work and shares the HSF's goals consider inviting them to be on the SG.
+
+## Follow-up from the WLCG/HSF 2025 Workshop
+
+Recap: should we have a particular focus on *Software Sustainability*? It is a popular and very relevant topic, with lots of cross-experiment potential. Would it be useful if the HSF were to solicit a mandate from WLCG for this task? It would need to then be expressed as a concrete time-bound task.
+
+Updates from CD on green/sustainable software:
+
+- Summer student completed a list of "green software" tools on Zenodo <https://zenodo.org/records/17176255>.
+- EuCAIF Green&Sustainable WG (kick-off: <https://indico.cern.ch/event/1547268/>) would like to propose some joint seminar topics on FAIR and green AI - will get in touch with seminar organisers.
+
+Action:
+
+- Eduardo and Graeme will have a coffee/tea with Simone/WLCG.
+    - Done, mandate is clear and forum will start in September (or July 30th? agreed with WLCG earlier on, but probably too early).
+- Caterina will have a PR at some point with resources
+    - Not yet done, see below (where? do we already want the table linked to the affiliated project page).
+- Caterina (or Eduardo) can report on WLCG sustainability kick-off and next steps.
+
+## AOB
+
+### Connections with other "checklists for software quality"
+
+TLDR: Stefan, CD and Michael Sparks did an exercise of roughly mapping the HSF affiliated project criteria to the ICFA lifecycle panel recommendations and the EVERSE RSQKit tasks. They should all link to each other in some way (how do we do this on our website?).
+
+Full version and insight in this [document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19PDPASnmldvpH1Wa03ucVrBqH-XkWy6-4lK8NqiHlU0/edit?tab=t.xxhm5tdm9sca#heading=h.6x0zzcpxod1).
+
+### Funding/training matters
+
+Caterina/Eduardo + others from the UK planning to put in a (small funding-wise) UK proposal centered around preparing and collecting material on environmentally sustainable software.
+
+Question to be discussed with Stefan: how to best integrate this in HSF training (using the same infrastructure = TeSS)?
+
+### IRIS-HEP update
+
+After a few months of postponements, we will present [HSF feedback](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zrV0P_kIDxwDS9bZsYYE6S3HXPUsaEXfKkQUYr8EjmA/edit?slide=id.p#slide=id.p) at the next IRIS-HEP SB meeting on Oct 7th
+
+Presentation needs a dust-off (please help with things that I forgot since July!)
+
+### Coordination Meetings
+
+As ever... [Chairing sign up document](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z1Z4payCpieOLiVFcC6y9j-KCj71u6xX232LHUgIHfI/edit).
+
+- Every SG member should really be doing 1+ of these in 1 year, which isn't that much after all. Expect a ping at some point if you've been shy ... ;-)
+
+### C&AF and Seminars
+
+- Need to progress on properly co-organising these.
+- From CD/GS/ER chat on WLCG environmental sustainability forum: are there any objections to moving seminars, compute & accelerator forum, and WLCG environmental sustainability forum into the same category?
+    - Potential category “Joint HSF, WLCG and Compute & Accelerator Forum events” here <https://indico.cern.ch/category/11728/> (owned by Stefan?)
+        - Agreed to make a move towards CERN/Seminars.
+
+### Next Meeting
+
+TBD, as we see fit.