National Science Foundation program supporting the facilitation, creation and growth of open-source ecosystems for the creation of new technology solutions.

NSF is introducing a new program called “Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems” (POSE). The purpose of the program is to harness the power of open-source development for the creation of new technology solutions to problems of national and societal importance. Many NSF-funded research projects result in publicly accessible, modifiable, and distributable open-sourced software, hardware or data platforms that catalyze further innovation. In some cases, an open-source product is widely adopted and forms the basis for a self-sustaining open-source ecosystem (OSE) comprises a distributed community of developers and a broad base of users across academia, industry and government. The goal of the POSE program is to fund new OSE managing organizations, each responsible for the creation and maintenance of infrastructure needed for efficient and secure operation of an OSE based around a specific open-source product or class of products. The early and intentional formation of such managing organizations is expected to ensure more secure open-source products, increased coordination of developer contributions, and a more focused route to impactful technologies.