Business case #81

dpshelio · 2025-12-15T18:38:58Z

At the moment this only includes

introductory sections

Other sections will be drafted on other pull requests open against
this branch to make reviews more manageable.

ospo/business-case.md

Co-authored-by: David Perez-Suarez <[email protected]>

github-actions · 2025-12-17T15:29:20Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Promote collaborations on students project with open source communities (e.g., master projects) (AIDE and SoftEng master programmes may be ready from 2026-2027)
+  - Support participation on Summer of Code programmes
+- Education - Skills development
+  - Create and deliver series of short courses/workshops covering Open Source basics (what's it, meaning of licensing, how to contribute,...)


🚫 [vale] _{reported by reviewdog 🐶}
[proselint.Typography] Consider using the '…' symbol instead of '...'.

github-actions · 2025-12-17T15:29:20Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Support participation on Summer of Code programmes
+- Education - Skills development
+  - Create and deliver series of short courses/workshops covering Open Source basics (what's it, meaning of licensing, how to contribute,...)
+  - Hackathon - find partners wot work with, e.g., UN Hackathon, NASA Open Science, ...


🚫 [vale] _{reported by reviewdog 🐶}
[proselint.Archaisms] 'wot' is archaic.

github-actions · 2025-12-17T15:29:20Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Support participation on Summer of Code programmes
+- Education - Skills development
+  - Create and deliver series of short courses/workshops covering Open Source basics (what's it, meaning of licensing, how to contribute,...)
+  - Hackathon - find partners wot work with, e.g., UN Hackathon, NASA Open Science, ...


🚫 [vale] _{reported by reviewdog 🐶}
[proselint.Typography] Consider using the '…' symbol instead of '...'.

github-actions · 2025-12-17T15:29:20Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Hackathon - find partners wot work with, e.g., UN Hackathon, NASA Open Science, ...
+- Community
+  - Support and promote community initiatives (Linux user group, Latex user group, Python Community of Practice, R Users, ..)
+  - Working with funding bodies and external stakeholders to promote Open Source, such as UKRI, DiRAC, Software Sustainability Institute, ...


🚫 [vale] _{reported by reviewdog 🐶}
[proselint.Typography] Consider using the '…' symbol instead of '...'.

ospo/business-case.md

mxochicale

Hi David and all, great start!
I have added a few comments. Happy to read it again.
Thanks, Miguel

mxochicale · 2025-12-18T06:11:44Z

ospo/business-case.md

+
+> context for your project, explaining the problem that it's meant to solve and how it aligns with the organisation's vision and strategic plan
+
+UCL has a long history of open-source software development for research and open-source educational materials.


long sounds vague, can we add the 1997 year or the number of years from the first open-source software projects?

Here, I disagree. The introduction is necessarily a summary. The study will be mentioned several times later with details, and probably we'll add it as an appendix.

Although might also be worth considering that UCL OSS will go back way before 1997 I imagine, it's just harder to discover details now! In the 1950s all academic source code was basically OSS...

ospo/business-case.md

mxochicale · 2025-12-18T06:36:29Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - metrics - what's created within/with help from UCL, what are we depending on. Attract funding and collaborations
+  - skills promoted will help students employment while also attract talent from open source communities
+  - gain technical sovereignty
+


leadership might be another variable including mentorship, couching and skills to lead and be part of successful open-source projects

mxochicale · 2025-12-18T06:47:34Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Design based on surveys run by other universities
+  - Users ([University of Wisconsin Madison results][uw-survey]), contributors ([University of California results][uc-survey])
+- Publish a guidance on how to release open source outcomes within UCL
+  - Including license, development models, community engagement, and commercial opportunities


I think commercial opportunities or Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) is a topic for itself. We have seen the need on selection of licensing for software, for instance dual-licencing is something I have been advocating to maintain community using open-source and academic licences and close source licences to protected ideas that could provide economical value.
In this blog, Matthieu Lavergne is talking about Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) and addressed this questions How challenging is the financing journey for COSS startups? Do COSS companies deliver superior exits?

samcunliffe · 2025-12-18T08:42:49Z

I think this should be reviewed and merged to main. And I think it's ready (arbeit with some polishing).

Other sections will be drafted on other pull requests open against this branch to make reviews more manageable.

I disagree with this way of working.

Co-authored-by: Sam Cunliffe <[email protected]>

ospo/business-case.md

Co-authored-by: Sam Cunliffe <[email protected]>

jonc125

Various thoughts from me on an initial read-through, and some proof reading.

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:06:10Z

ospo/Activities-of-academic-OSPO.png

What's not obvious in this diagram, although perhaps it is in the text (it could come under advocacy for instance) is promoting the use of OSS within universities, both on the 'business' side as well as for research & teaching. The emphasis here seems to be more on OSS development. (Of course, if you're using it, hopefully you're also contributing back!)

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:06:52Z

ospo/business-case.md


 # UCL's Open Source Programme Office

 *Executive Summary*


Should this have a proper heading style? I'm guessing it'll be written at the end?

yes, styling will be done at the end.

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:17:01Z

ospo/business-case.md

+
+> context for your project, explaining the problem that it's meant to solve and how it aligns with the organisation's vision and strategic plan
+
+UCL has a long history of open-source software development for research and open-source educational materials.


Although might also be worth considering that UCL OSS will go back way before 1997 I imagine, it's just harder to discover details now! In the 1950s all academic source code was basically OSS...

ospo/business-case.md

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:50:39Z

ospo/business-case.md

+- community
+  - Ease collaboration with different institutions for similar tasks (from research software to infrastructure)
+- policy
+  - Include Open Source solutions and technical sovereignty into UCL procurement,


I'm not sure about the 'sovereignty' term when applied to an institution rather than a country. We don't have a king of UCL ;)

Is this commonly used in non-OSPO contexts too?

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:54:07Z

ospo/business-case.md

 *explain how it fits a niche or serves a need*

-> what are the risk of not having one?
+> What is the risk of not having one?


Also financial risk:

Spending on closed source products when there are good cheaper OSS options available

Vendor lock-in leading to inability to pivot away from an expensive contract (at least without significant cost)

Poor choices of OSS that lead to expensive failures or support costs, rather than options that e.g. can be well supported in-house

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T09:54:36Z

ospo/business-case.md

+
+
 *mission statement*
 > You’ll need to define your project vision, goals and objectives.


We also need to reflect the viewpoint of people like Will Greenly here, not just the research perspective.

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T10:00:19Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Find out what support they need
+  - Catalogue and highlight on the website those courses
+- Education - collaboration
+  - Promote collaborations on students project with open source communities (e.g., master projects) (AIDE and SoftEng master programmes may be ready from 2026-2027)


CCMI CDT is doing this

jonc125 · 2026-01-07T10:02:45Z

ospo/business-case.md

 *risk assessment*
-> identify and analyze the risks associated with your project activities. From there, you can assess the likelihood and impact of each and rank them based on this information. The risk assessment makes it easier to focus on the most pressing risks and includes a mitigation strategy to reduce the impact in case the risk comes to fruition.
+> identify and analyse the risks associated with your project activities. From there, you can assess the likelihood and impact of each and rank them based on this information. The risk assessment makes it easier to focus on the most pressing risks and includes a mitigation strategy to reduce the impact in case the risk comes to fruition.
 #### Activities 


We'll need a more detailed breakdown eventually: what will the business case fund in year 1, 2, etc? How will this become financially sustainable for UCL?

github-actions · 2026-01-07T16:04:25Z

ospo/business-case.md

+  - Support participation on Summer of Code programmes
+- Education - Skills development
+  - Create and deliver series of short courses/workshops covering Open Source basics (what's it, meaning of licensing, how to contribute, …)
+  - Hackathon - find partners wot work with, e.g., UN Hackathon, NASA Open Science, …


🚫 [vale] _{reported by reviewdog 🐶}
[proselint.Archaisms] 'wot' is archaic.

Co-authored-by: Jonathan Cooper <[email protected]>

ospo/business-case.md

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A first few seed-project statements (#57)

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Co-authored-by: David Perez-Suarez <[email protected]>

Plan of activities (#85)

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		> context for your project, explaining the problem that it's meant to solve and how it aligns with the organisation's vision and strategic plan

		UCL has a long history of open-source software development for research and open-source educational materials.



		mission statement
		> You’ll need to define your project vision, goals and objectives.

Business case #81

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Business case #81

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dpshelio commented Dec 15, 2025

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