3. Licensing - what software packages do groups use and is there anyway that we can have communal licenses and save some money. To this end it would be useful if each representative could make a list the commonly used software in each group. Perhaps those who cannot make the meeting might want to a summary to this list. This topic was a particular request from our HoD.
IDL is the most commonly used piece of software in Astro that needs a licence. However, this licensing is covered by an agreement between STFC (ex-PPARC) and ITT so that we get the licences essentially free for astrophysical research. I don't think this arrangement can be extended beyond astro (I'm not sure what the situation is for Space). We have some users of Mathematica (legal ones) and other commercial packages but not many. Other than IDL much of the software used is produced by the astrophysics community and is open source (eg. IRAF, CIAO, HCSS...). Dave