About POSE

The Pathways to Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program offers new opportunities for researchers to translate scientific and engineering innovations into impacts. By supporting the creation of managing organizations, the program facilitates the creation and growth of sustainable, high-impact open-source ecosystems around already-developed open-source products, many of which were created by prior NSF-funded research.

Research may result in publicly accessible, modifiable and distributable open-source products like software, hardware, models, specifications, programming languages or data platforms that could be ripe for further innovation. In some cases, an open-source product that shows potential for wide adoption forms the basis for a self-sustaining open-source ecosystem that comprises a leadership team; a managing organization with a well-defined governance structure and distributed development model; a cohesive community of external intellectual content developers; and a broad base of users across academia, industry and government.

The POSE program supports the development of open-source ecosystems by funding the formation and operation of open-source ecosystem managing organizations.

By enabling the early and intentional formation of managing organizations, the program aims to ensure safe and secure open-source product deployments, increased coordination of developer contributions, and a faster, more direct route to national, societal and economic impacts. A successful open-source ecosystem can realize the potential of an open-source technology at scale in diverse applications.

POSE was launched in 2022 by NSF’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships in collaboration with all of NSF’s other directorates.

Through the POSE program, NSF-funded researchers can increase the impact of their translational research and address pressing national, societal, and economic challenges. See below for recent POSE-funded projects.

Phase I awards