An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant supports the establishment of an OSPO at Syracuse University. The effort is a collaboration between Syracuse University’s Office of Research, SU Libraries, and Information Technology Services and will be led and championed by Duncan Brown, Syracuse’s Vice President for Research. Sloan Foundation grant funds will support the hiring of a new full-time director who will report directly to Brown. Other grant funds will support a post-doctoral fellow focused on open source software development, an annual summer workshop, support for 15 faculty-driven, open source development or research projects, and the launch of a website portal that will provide access to publications, patents, products, and software developed through collaboration with the OSPO. In addition, the project team will document lessons learned and publish a playbook containing these lessons to inform similar efforts at other university campuses.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant funds the establishment of an OSPO at Stanford University. Stanford’s OSPO will be anchored in the Center for Open and Reproducible Science and led by cognitive neuroscientist Russell Poldrack. Grants funds will support a host of activities, including the recruitment of a full-time community manager, the establishment of an external advisory board and executive committee, the creation of a registry of open source projects being spearheaded by Stanford faculty, support for at least 20 faculty projects, and an ongoing series of lectures, hackathons and code sprints to engage the campus community. In addition, Poldrack and his team are actively engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in open source communities and plan to compile a guide of best practices for fostering inclusive, welcoming open source projects.

An Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is an organizational construct, originally developed in technology companies, with dedicated staff who coordinate and support open source activity. When adapted to a university, an OSPO can offer: 1) training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow local software efforts into healthy open source projects, 2) advice on how best to contribute to existing projects, 3) documentation of the value of open source work and 4) facilitation of relationships with other organizational units like technology transfer, research computing, or the library. This grant supports the establishment of an OSPO at George Washington University. The GW OSPO will sit organizationally within the university’s Libraries and Academic Innovation (LAI) unit and be co-led by Geneva Henry (the dean of LAI as well as the current Vice Provost for libraries and information technology) and Lorena Barba (Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering). Grant funds will support the hiring of a Program Director, consulting services to individual faculty and staff, an annual “Open Source Con” that would bring together developers and contributors from across campus, strategic planning activities around web content and services, and community-building and outreach activities to engage GW faculty and students, including workshops, software camps, information sessions, micro-learning courses, and undergraduate awards program recognizing outstanding open source software contributions by GW students.