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 the Georgia Institute of Technology. The planned OSPO will be hosted by Georgia Tech’s Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC) with strong collaboration from GT’s Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) and the University Library. The Georgia Tech OSPO will be co-led by Jeffrey Young, Senior Research Scientist in the School of Computer Science and Fang Liu, Senior Research Scientist at PACE. Grant funds will support a host of activities, including the development of community driven community guidelines for open source software projects on campus, support for at least 30 faculty-driven open source software projects, workshops and a series of training events targeting both GT students and faculty, and two undergraduate internship programs, one over the summer and another during the school year. Additional grant funds will support outreach activities outside the GT campus, with a particular focus on faculty and students at HBCUs and Minority Serving Institution in the Atlanta area.

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 the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The new OSPO will be housed in the University’s Data Science Institute (DSI) and be led by DSI Director Kyle Cranmer, a physicist with a passion for nurturing an open source ethos on the UW campus and beyond. At the center of the University of Wisconsin’s planned OSPO is a ‘maturity model’ that aims to move individuals from awareness and use of open source to active community contribution and finally into leadership of community projects. This model will guide an approach to supporting faculty and students into deeper engagement with open source software practices. Grant funds will support a survey of current practice on campus, the development of a series of trainings, and an expansion of UW’s existing Open Source Internship program (which onboards undergraduates into research experiences as contributors to faculty software projects) that will include a partnership with Madison College. Funds will also support events aimed at engaging UW—Madison Extension, the Office of Business Engagement, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Madison area. Other grant funds will enable the hiring of an OSPO Program Manager, provide partial administrative and communications support, and provide access to a data science or research software engineer for technical consulting.

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 the University of Texas at Austin, co-led by Jennifer Schopf, Angela Newell, Michael Shensky, and James Howison. UT Austin’s planned OPSO will be a collaboration between Campus IT, the UT Libraries, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), and the School of Information. It will structure its activities strategically around a “Participation Pathway” that envisions engaging faculty and students by moving from the basic use of open source software through contribution, sharing, accepting external contributions, and ultimately the development of an ecosystem of related projects. Grant funds will support a portion of the OSPO Director’s time, substantial engagement from two Library-based positions with expertise in open source research software, a pool of trainers to run short bootcamps and courses. We anticipate support for a broad set of faculty-driven open source projects, and the inclusion of additional open source material into several existing support systems on campus. Other funds will support the creation of resources focused on lowering barriers to share and reuse scientific software, including documenting best practices surrounding the containerization, distribution, and deployment of open source software.

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.