NEWS: STARLINK
Software Librarian
Expires: 30-Jun-2005
PPARC's Review of Astronomical Software, chaired by Paul Hewett,
reported to Science Committee at the end of April. The Review
recommended, amongst other things, that support for core
infrastructure and strategic software should continue. Science
Committee declined to accept that recommendation.
One consequence of this decision is that Starlink will cease to exist
at the end of June 2005, i.e. in about 6 weeks' time. The Starlink
programming team will be disbanded and programmer contracts will
finish at that time. The Starlink QUICK and News services will cease.
The Starlink Software Collection of 100+ applications and libraries
will no longer be supported, including for example GAIA, TOPCAT,
KAPPA, CCDPACK, CONVERT, SPLAT, FIGARO, PHOTOM, POLPACK and the
SLALIB, AST, HDS and NDF libraries.
A final release will be made and then the Starlink CVS source code
repository (more than 2.5 million lines of executable code) will be
mothballed. Further details of the disposition of the software will be
provided before the end of June.
Provision of IDL licences via Starlink for PPARC funded astronomy will
continue until the current contract with RSI ends in October.
Dr David Giaretta
Head of Starlink