2024-03-05 –, Stage Auditorium
CERN, the physics lab near Geneva, operating the Large Hadron Collider, has a rich history of Open Source contributions and in Open Science. Last year CERN established an innovative Open Source Program Office (OSPO), covering both software and hardware. The OSPO aims to ensure CERN's Open Source projects adhere to best practices, fostering consistency and longevity of Open Source at CERN.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is considered the world’s largest physics lab and sits on the border of France and Switzerland, close to Geneva. It is known for operating the Large Hadron Collider, and also runs many other research projects as well as all the supporting infrastructure. CERN’s community is a strong user, supporter and contributor to Open Source and is proud to have been the founder of many Open Source innovations, among them being the World Wide Web. Open Source is one of the key elements of CERN’s Open Science activities.
Last year, November 2023, CERN launched an Open Source Program Office to better support Open Source practices at CERN. In comparison to other OSPOs around, CERN’s OSPO takes a novel approach by including Open Source Hardware in it. The internal and external mandate of the OSPO underlines its a service “from the community to the community” to make sure CERN’s Open Source projects, contributions and usage is consistent, long-lived and following best practices.
Giacomo Tenaglia is a computer scientist with 25 years of experience of building and running services based on FOSS components. He works at CERN IT department where is currently taking care of configuration management and scientific computing services. Giacomo recently led the initiative to build CERN's Open Source Program Office (OSPO) which is a community driven initiative at CERN to support consistent Open Source practices of software and hardware at CERN.