The Anaconda Transition Working Group (ATWG) has been meeting weekly since October 2024 to discuss the implications of the update to the ToS that was released by Anaconda Inc. earlier in the year. The change indicated that Anaconda would no longer support free access to the base distribution or their defaults channel for non-commercial academic research at institutions with more than 200 employees. This change caused significant concern and outcry among academic institutions that have historically relied upon these products as exemplified by the article ”Saying Goodbye to Anaconda” by Robert McDermott.
In September 2024, a few months after widespread enforcement of these changes began, a blog post was published to clarify the intent of the update to the community, and seemed to suggest that Anaconda would remain free for researchers at accredited universities, and that a revised update is forthcoming by year-end. Yet the community remained concerned since blog posts are not legally binding (unlike ToS) – which led to creation of ATWG.
ATWG met with the Anaconda Inc. leadership in December, 2024 to help the research computing and data (RCD) community come up with alternatives and to ensure compliance in the face of the changes proposed by Anaconda Inc. proposed changes. The goals of the meeting included:
- Obtaining clarity on the update to the ToS
- Current status of proposed changes
- Implications of the change on the larger community
- Thoughts and suggestions on how to proceed
- Specific compliance details for various types of institutions
The Anaconda team was very receptive to our concerns. The team indicated that the revised ToS would be released in early 2025 and that it would not affect academic institutions and government labs, which confirmed what was communicated in their blog post. However, for compliance details specifically concerning non-profit organizations and industry partners a post release follow-up meeting with ATWG is being planned to discuss any remaining concerns for such cases.
In addition to meeting with the Anaconda team, ATWG is developing recommendations for alternative methods to install software packages that are open source, free of cost, and independent of Anaconda’s base distribution or default channels. This is a work in progress but our initial set of recommendations can be found at https://github.com/CaRCC/anaconda-transition/.
We also plan to publish three white papers to communicate the impact to the broader community. While the content of these papers may change due to their dependency on Anaconda’s ToS release and the follow-up meeting, our current plan is to target the following groups through these papers:
White paper A: Communication for RCD facilitators
Provides guidance to RCD facilitators at national and campus centers working with researchers on their computational workflows. The whitepaper will include the relevant breakdown of facts and choices between package-environment tools from the perspective of a facilitator. This includes guidance on communicating with users about the situation, best practices, and ways of deploying Anaconda within compliance.
White paper B: Beginner-friendly communication for users/researchers
Provides guidance on ensuring compliance, maintaining reproducibility, and exploring alternatives like Miniforge and conda-forge, while emphasizing the need for institutional awareness, IT support, and careful management of dependencies to mitigate risks associated with Anaconda usage and its potential impact on research collaboration, including challenges in sharing environments and maintaining compatibility across institutions.
White paper C: Advice for institutional/research computing group leadership
The ATWG is advocating for equitable licensing, exploring alternatives, and fostering collaboration to ensure research continuity and reduce reliance on Anaconda, if needed. This letter summarizes our efforts on ensuring compliance and reproducibility of software packages and provides guidance on how to execute that proposal to institutional computing leadership.
Anaconda Transition Working Group
If you are interested in being involved in the Anaconda Transition Working Group, additional details can be found at https://carcc.org/anaconda-transition-working-group/
Stay tuned for what’s next with ATWG!