Open Source is
Tech Transfer
University technology transfer offices are uniquely positioned to support open source software — and open source practices are an efficient, often optimal mechanism for translating computational research to the world.
The Core Argument
Why Open Source Belongs
in the TTO Mission
University technology transfer offices were founded to translate research into public benefit. For decades, that has meant patents and proprietary licensing. But as software has extended a computational layer across nearly all of basic scientific research, a gap has opened: open source — the dominant mode of software-driven discovery — has been largely left out of the TTO mission.
"Open source technology transfer drives impact by accelerating scientific discovery, enabling industry collaboration, promoting broad public awareness and adoption, facilitating commercialization and sustainability of open source projects, fostering startup creation, attracting external funding opportunities, advancing workforce development, catalyzing regional economic growth, and enhancing the reputation of academic researchers and their institutions."— OSiTT Working Group Definition of Impact
The policy rationale for statutes like the Bayh-Dole Act — promoting utilization of federally funded inventions, ensuring public availability, protecting against nonuse — is met by open source practices at least as well as by patent licensing for computational technologies. TTOs are the organizations best positioned to facilitate this work.
The Framework
Five Areas Where TTOs
Can Support Open Source
Open Source Reporting
TTOs can apply the same relationship-building resources used to capture invention disclosures to tracking open source projects. Quantifying open source software at a university is a prerequisite to measuring its technology transfer impact.
Open Source Licensing
TTOs are in a strong position to assist researchers with license compliance, choice of license based on project objectives, and establishing governance structures like contributor license agreements and contribution guidelines.
Promotion
TTO websites can feature open source projects alongside traditional technologies, with links to public repositories, publications, and datasets — lowering the barrier for potential partners to evaluate university computational research.
Community Building
Just as TTOs support startups with market research and customer discovery, they can help open source projects develop strategies for adoption, manage feature requests, and build contributor communities.
Sustainability
TTOs support business model ideation for traditional startups. The same expertise applies to open source: advising on commercial open source (COSS) startup models, sponsor-funded models, and open core licensing as viable research endpoints.
OSiTT Working Group Slides
About This Project
This site is a resource developed through the Open Source is Tech Transfer (OSiTT) working group — a community of 32 TTOs, open source programs offices, and related organizations across the United States and abroad who work with open source software.
The project is led by Andrew Wichmann at Johns Hopkins University, with co-authors Megan Forbes and Ashwathi Iyer (University of Michigan).
Learn MoreThe OSiTT Working Group
Monthly discussions throughout 2025 brought together practitioners from Arizona, Chicago, CMU, GW, Illinois, JHU, LSU, MIT, Michigan, NYU, Oregon State, RIT, Stanford, Yale, and institutions in Ireland, Belgium, and beyond.