The Institute is deeply rooted in the principles and use of free/open-source software (FOSS). The use of free software in research is essential for several reasons. To mention two in which the freedoms are crucial: long-running projects that rely on proprietary software can be crippled by the vagaries of that company’s marketing direction (or even the company’s disappearance). And of course research that uses proprietary software is not reproducible.
Researchers at the Institute use free software operating systems and tools for their work, and all software developed by the institute and its interns will be released under the GNU General Public License. In doing so we promote tools that advance learning and knowledge.
We also envision that some interns will choose to work on pure free/open-source software development projects, such as those on the list maintained by the Google Summer of Code.