Slide 1

Open Source Research and Development

•Research issue is too complex or big for isolated researchers to solve

•Promotes highest level of collaboration

•Preserves intellectual capital

•Serves to engage partners from academia and industry who may not be directly involved in funded applications development and testing

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•Currently seeking to refine how best to structure open source agreements

–maximize collaboration

–without reducing innovation or endangering commercialization

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	USDOT is applying the open source concept to a big initiative for the first time. There have been other ITS programs where this has been examined: QuickZone, NGSIM, TRANSIMS Open Source.

	The push for open source here is a realization that no one program has enough resources to solve the problem completely. The open source research and development concept is good for taking on those issues things that are really hard to solve, where collective thinking is needed to solve the problem.

	Secondly, the intellectual capital is preserved and available. Typically when research is conducted, the rest of the community benefits from the research only when a publication comes out. Once the project ends, the value starts to decline over time due to lost or poor documentation. But with the open source approach there is the potential to manage and grow intellectual capital.

	Finally, the open source concept brings together stakeholders in a way that traditional, proprietary development does not. The open source concept allows multiple researchers and developers to work together in solving complex problems.