tag: Open Source Program Offices

In this issue brief, we extend our earlier study of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) to focus on two system-wide frameworks in the University of California and University of Texas systems. By operating at the system level, the UC and UT OSPOs aim to further embody principles of openness and more widely and effectively enable open source work by making resources and expertise more scalable as well as by establishing a framework to facilitate community-building and cross-institution collaboration.

Introduction Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) are dedicated units that coordinate and nurture open source software adoption across the organization. In the past two decades, as companies recognized that open source software “was not just a viable option but a critical path for technology innovation,” OSPOs became relatively common in large corporations, especially in the tech sector.[1] OSPOs are often initially focused on corporate compliance with the terms of open source software the company licensed, but…