photo of an open sign

The Johns Hopkins University Open Source Programs Office (OSPO) is the central hub for open source at JHU. We are committed to helping faculty, staff, and students create, contribute to, and benefit from open source software by:

  • Fostering an engaged campus community, promoting the value and measuring the impact of open source, and connecting Hopkins with the wider open source ecosystem.
  • Offering educational programs, information, and best practices to enable faculty, staff, and students to effectively use, contribute to, and benefit from open source software.
  • Providing resources and expertise to help advance and sustain open source initiatives within the Hopkins community.

The Open Source Programs Office is part of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries, which supports open scholarship through the development of digital infrastructure and applications.   

Key Initiatives for 2024

  • Increase the discoverability and reproducibility of open-source software on campus through resources and training programs 
  • Launch a catalog of open-source projects from across the University. 
  • Expand use and engagement with code and collaboration tools provided by the OSPO including GitHub Campus and Bitergia 
  • Support Free and Open-Source Project Fund recipients and leverage the insights learned from the Fund to identify services the OSPO can provide to provide better support to OSS practitioners on campus 
  • Engage in cross-institutional, collaborative efforts to build a thriving community of practice around academic open-source software 

History and Past Projects

The DRCC launched the first US university-based OSPO by working with open-source companies and foundations with the goal of establishing a model for other universities. Through the OSPO, Johns Hopkins University has become a member of the Eclipse Foundation including access to their working groups. The JHU OSPO is also part of the CURIOSS, OSPO++, and SustainOSS networks, which work to support and promote the work of OSPOs and open-source programs within academic and civic organizations. The Open Source Programs Office is generously supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Semesters of Code: Through a partnership with JHU’s Department of Computer Science and Microsoft, the OSPO supported JHU students’ participation in Semesters of Code, a course offering a mentored experience with open-source software from both within and beyond Johns Hopkins University. 

Good Practices Primer – Code and Software: Working with OSPO++, published an updated open-source primer as part of the National Academies Roundtable for Aligning Incentives on Open Science toolkit, which has already been cited as an exemplar for how other communities can advance the work of the toolkit. 

Lutece: Demonstrated the use of Lutece, an open source municipal services platform developed and used by the City of Paris, at the St. Francis Neighborhood Center in west Baltimore.  

OSPO Annual Reports