PlasmaPy: an open source community-developed Python package for plasma physics*

PlasmaPy is a community-developed and community-driven open source core Python package for plasma physics. This package is being developed to provide the core functionality that is needed to support a fully open source Python ecosystem for plasma physics. PlasmaPy prioritizes code readability, consistency, and maintainability while using best practices for scientific computing such as version control, continuous integration testing, embedding documentation in code, and code review. PlasmaPy has a code of conduct and is available under a BSD 3-clause license with explicit protections against software patents. PlasmaPy includes functional and object-oriented interfaces to particle data; tools to calculate plasma parameters, dielectric tensor components, and transport coefficients; mathematical functions commonly needed in plasma physics; and tools to analyze diagnostic data including Langmuir probes. Work is underway to develop PlasmaPy's base data structures. PlasmaPy's first development releases serve as an invitation to plasma students and scientists to collaboratively develop a community-wide shared software package for our field.