Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE)

Overview

The purpose of the POSE program is to support a new pathway for translating research or innovation results by supporting managing organizations that facilitate the creation and growth of sustainable, high-impact OSEs around already-developed open-source products, tools, and artifacts. The POSE program aims to grow the community of researchers who develop and contribute to OSE efforts, and enable pathways to intentionally transition promising, robust open-source innovations into self-sustaining OSEs that could lead to new technology products or services with broad societal impacts.

This solicitation seeks two types of proposals, allowing teams to propose specific activities to scope and plan the establishment of an OSE (Phase I), and to establish a sustainable OSE based on a robust open-source product that shows promise in the ability to both meet an emergent societal or national need and build a community to help develop it (Phase II).

Phase I: OSE Scoping and Planning Proposals
Phase I projects are for open-source research products with a small community of external users though the product may not necessarily have external content developers. The objectives of Phase I projects are to: (1) enable scoping activities that will inform the transition of promising research products that are already available in open-source formats into sustainable and robust OSEs that will have broad societal impacts, and (2) provide training to teams interested in building such an OSE.

Each Phase I proposal must describe the current context and, to the extent known at the time of the Phase I proposal, the long-term vision and potential impact of the proposed OSE. The proposals should also include specific scoping activities that will inform plans for ecosystem discovery; organizational and governance structure; continuous development, integration, and deployment of the open-source product(s); and community building for users and intellectual content developers. Phase I scoping activities are intended to help teams determine (a) whether their open-source product is suitable and ready to be transitioned into an OSE; (b) whether there is a user base that is ready to serve as early adopters; and (c) whether there is a distributed intellectual content developer community that can help develop and maintain the core product going forward.

Phase II: Establishment and Expansion Proposals Phase II projects are for open-source research products with a small community of external users and external content developers. The objective of Phase II projects is to support the transition of a promising open-source product into a sustainable and robust OSE. Phase II proposals are expected to have conducted the scoping activities (not necessarily via a Phase I award) needed to develop a detailed project plan to support the community-driven distributed development and deployment of successful open-source tools into operational environments. The proposals must include a community outreach plan that outlines activities to engage the intended intellectual content developer community that will further develop and maintain the technology and identifies user communities and/or organizations that will serve as early adopters of the technology.

Each Phase II proposal must describe the current context and the long-term vision and impact of the proposed OSE. The proposal should also include a well-developed, cohesive plan for building an OSE, including ecosystem establishment/growth, organizational and governance structure, a framework for continuous development, integration, and deployment of the technology, methods for evaluating the OSE's effectiveness, and activities to ensure security and privacy, build the community, and sustain the ecosystem.

By the submission deadline, any PI, co-PI, or other senior project personnel must hold either:

• a tenured or tenure-track position, or
• a primary, full-time, paid appointment in a research or teaching position

Phase I awardees are not obligated to submit Phase II proposals in the future.
An NSF POSE Phase I award is not required for the submission of a Phase II proposal.

Phase I proposals are limited to a total budget of $300,000 with durations of up to one year.  

Phase II proposals are limited to a total budget of $1,500,000 with durations of up to two years.

Importantly, the POSE program is not intended to fund the development of open-source products, including tools and artifacts. The POSE program is also not intended to fund existing well-resourced, open-source communities or ecosystems. Instead, the program aims to support new managing organizations to catalyze distributed, community-driven development and growth of new OSEs.