CSSI Framework: An open source software ecosystem for plasma physics

PlasmaPy is an open source Python package for plasma physics that is currently under development. The ultimate goal of this project is to foster a community-wide open source software ecosystem for plasma research and education. Following Astropy's model, functionality needed across disciplines is being implemented in the PlasmaPy core package, while more specialized functionality will be developed in affiliated packages. We strive to use best practices from software engineering that have heretofore been uncommon in plasma physics, including continuous integration testing and code review. We will describe code development and community building activities from the first few months of our NSF CSSI award and plans for the next five years.