Open Source Software Model Attractive for Quantum Software Development

(PLOS.org) Open source software is becoming crucial in the design and testing of quantum algorithms. Many of the tools are backed by major commercial vendors with the goal to make it easier to develop quantum software. Quantum computers have started to leave the labs and commercial entities are beginning to sell computing time on this new type of hardware. Thus, with a shared scientific and commercial interest a number of motivations emerges why the open source model is attractive for developing and distributing software in this domain.
Those motivations include:
–Reproducibility
–Impact and publicity
–Building a community and ecosystem
–Gaining credit and increasing human capital.
This research article is lengthy and includes an overview an overview of all the open source projects considered in this review.