Why VERSO Was Created#
Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) have become standard in the tech industry, providing structure, governance, and strategy for managing open source. However, they remain rare in higher education, despite universities being among the largest producers of open-source software. Academic research generates thousands of software tools, data pipelines, and computational models annually, yet most lack the institutional support needed for sustainability and impact. Researchers frequently create tools with significant potential for broader impact, but barriers such as licensing, compliance, sustainability, and community engagement prevent effective sharing and maintenance.
Universities should lead in open-source adoption. Unlike corporations, universities have a mission rooted in public good, knowledge dissemination, and community engagement—values that align perfectly with open-source principles. Yet without dedicated institutional structures, open-source work in academia typically suffers from fragmentation (individual labs reinventing solutions), compliance risks (unclear licensing and intellectual property policies), and short lifespans (projects disappearing when grants end or contributors graduate).
The Vermont Research Open Source Program Office (VERSO) was established at the University of Vermont to address these gaps and demonstrate how an academic OSPO can transform research culture. By establishing clear policies for licensing, attribution, and compliance, offering templates for governance and contribution guidelines, and providing workshops, documentation, and one-on-one consultations, VERSO aimed to reduce uncertainty for researchers and drive adoption of open-source practices.
Critically, VERSO positions open source as more than a technical choice—it’s a driver of research impact, reproducibility, and collaboration. Advocating for its inclusion in grant proposals, tenure considerations, and institutional strategy is fundamental for the office’s long-term sustainability. By creating VERSO, we aimed to make open source a first-class citizen in academic research, ensuring that the tools and knowledge produced at UVM are accessible, sustainable, and impactful.
Original Goals of the First Sloan Grant for VERSO#
Software is a critical component of modern science—both as a tool for research and as a form of intellectual property with the potential for broad societal impact. Yet, at the University of Vermont (UVM), there were no formal systems to support the creation, governance, and dissemination of open-source software. As a land-grant institution, UVM has a mission to make knowledge accessible and beneficial to the Vermont community, but this mandate was not fully realized in the realm of software.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant proposal supported the creation of the Vermont Research Open Source Program Office (VERSO), an academic Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at a community-focused, land-grant university. The vision was to build a model for how universities can institutionalize open-source practices, starting with a pilot program housed in the UVM Library and closely connected to the Open Source Ecosystems and Networks (OCEAN) Lab.
The proposal outlined three core aims:
Build Infrastructure for Open Source at UVM
Develop systems, policies, and processes to enable cross-unit collaboration on open-source projects. This included creating governance frameworks, licensing guidance, and replicable resources for other universities. Through pilot projects—ranging from drone software to agriculture, health, and interlibrary lending—VERSO would train and empower students and researchers to contribute to open source.Engage Community Stakeholders as Co-Developers
In alignment with UVM’s land-grant mission, VERSO aimed to work with Vermont’s agencies, businesses, and nonprofits as partners in open-source development. By leveraging UVM Extension and the Office of Engagement, the program sought to ensure that open-source solutions addressed real community needs while fostering two-way knowledge exchange.Advance Research on Open Source in Science
VERSO planned to study how scientists create and use open-source software, generating data to inform both practice and policy. This included sampling scientific projects on platforms like GitHub, analyzing responses to global challenges such as COVID-19, and documenting VERSO’s own initiatives to produce an open playbook for other institutions.
Placement of VERSO#
The Aflred P. Sloan grant that created VERSO in 2022 was supported by the UVM Library through Library Dean Bryn Geffert and Juniper Lovato at the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (CEMS). This placed the new office between a college and a cross-campus department and provided connections to students, faculty and staff that are most likely to be in the open source programming space while also giving it reach to move beyond CEMS to support a broader spectrum of the community.
The first physical office was places in Howe Library building in a basement office. By 2024 VERSO had moved under the Vermont Complex Systems Center as it was becoming an independent institute under the Office of the Vice President of Research. The office at that time moved into Innovation Hall. The change provided the base for inter-disciplinary work across all colleges and tied more deeply with community projects and research translation in the Office of Engagement.
While this change has been beneficial, open source program offices like VERSO often struggle as their activities, like support researchers, or student education, or building infrastructure, or driving policy and running external community events does not fit neatly into any one office on a campus. In some ways the Library made sense as a place to distribute service, but as an office that also needed to get grants to survive, and needing to run student educational programming, it would have presented different kinds of problems.
VERSO’s Core Principles#
VERSO was founded on three guiding principles that shaped its mission and operations:
Enablement#
Enablement means turning good intentions into actionable steps so that open source becomes a natural part of the research lifecycle. Many researchers want to share their work but face barriers such as unclear licensing, lack of infrastructure, and uncertainty about best practices. VERSO’s role is to lower these barriers by:
Providing clear guidance on licensing and intellectual property.
Offering templates for governance, contribution guidelines, and documentation.
Delivering training and workshops to build confidence in open-source practices.
Creating infrastructure makes it easy to release and maintain open source projects.
Community#
Community is not just about participation; it’s about creating a sense of awareness, belonging and shared purpose around open science. Open source thrives on collaboration, and VERSO aims to foster a culture of shared knowledge both within UVM and beyond. This involves:
Building a community of practice among faculty, students, and staff.
Hosting events like hackathons, conferences, workshops, and meetups sessions to connect people across disciplines.
Encouraging partnerships with other universities, nonprofits, and industry to expand the reach of UVM’s open-source projects.
Creating communication channels contributors can share ideas and solve problems together.
Sustainability#
Sustainability ensures that open-source outputs remain useful, maintained, and impactful well beyond their initial development phase. Too often, open-source projects in academia disappear when a grant ends or a key contributor graduates. VERSO is committed to ensuring longevity and resilience by:
Embedding sustainability planning into every project from the start.
Exploring funding models that support long-term maintenance, such as institutional backing or external partnerships.
Documenting processes and creating replicable frameworks so projects can outlive individual contributors.
Promoting governance structures that distribute responsibility and prevent single points of failure.