Building a Network of Open Source Program Offices at the University of California

Public universities, like the University of California, are the source of amazing innovation and discovery. The UC-system has ten campuses, five medical centers, and three affiliated national laboratories. Researchers in the UC system develop an average of five inventions per day. UC campuses also have significant expertise in developing open source technologies and ecosystems. Open has long been a theme for the UC system from open data to open access to open education, with reproducibility and transparency in research receiving increased recognition in the wake of multiple US government efforts advancing open and equitable research. In an effort to enable UC campuses and their affiliated researchers to expand their impact on the broader community, a UC network of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) was formed in the Spring of 2024. As with OSPOs in industry, academic OSPOs aim to be a center of gravity for the open source work of their organizations. The UC network’s goal mirrors University of California’s mission to provide “long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge.” The six partnering campuses – Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz – are working to increase the impact of research and education undertaken throughout the system by leveraging open source projects and communities. The UC OSPO Network effort – which is funded through a grant by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation – looks to institutionalize this approach throughout the UC system and create a model for other large public university systems to follow. In this session, presenters from UC Santa Cruz and UCLA will discuss their work so far and explore how the campus OSPOs can better integrate campus-driven innovation and learning into surrounding communities. This session will also address how universities can contribute back to open source communities – particularly through the support and training of new contributors and research that strengthens current best practices and sustainability efforts of existing open source projects.