CSC News

Center for Open Software Engineering Joins Open Source for America

COSE Joins Coalition Advocating Open Source in the U.S. Federal Government

Media Contact(s):  
Dr. Laurie Williams, 919/513-4151
Ken Tate, 919/513-4292

July 22, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NC State’s Department of Computer Science Center for Open Software Engineering (COSE) announced today that it has joined Open Source for America, a broad cross-section of more than 50 companies, academic institutions, communities, related groups and individuals that serve as a unified voice for the promotion of open source in the U.S. Federal government sector.  Open Source for America strives to effect change in government to encourage broader support of open source technologies and the open source development community.

“We've received great response from companies, organizations and individuals interested in joining together to advocate for greater use of open source software in the U.S. federal government,” said David Thomas, principal at Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti and spokesman for the Open Source for America campaign. “We are very pleased to welcome NC State’s COSE in joining our cause and look forward to their active involvement in articulating the true value open source delivers to the U.S. government.”

Located in state-of-the-art teaching and research facilities on Centennial Campus, the COSE is directed by Dr. Laurie Williams, associate professor in the Computer Science department.  Williams is a leading software engineering researcher, known for her work in agile software development, reliability, testing, and security, and is a former IBM employee.  Industrial partnerships have already been established with ABB, IBM, and Red Hat; representatives of these companies comprise the COSE advisory board.

“The COSE research team is proud to be among the founding institutions of the coalition,” said Williams.  “The COSE research team is focused on analyzing the reliability, security, and privacy-preserving capabilities of open source applications.  We hope to contribute to the efforts of the coalition by increasing the trust by the U.S. government of open course applications through our analysis.  In particular, our current focus is on the analysis of open source health care IT/electronic medical records applications, a national priority as outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.”

As a member of Open Source for America, COSE has pledged to support the organization's mission and its founding principles.  This includes the belief that the U.S. federal government can and should become more transparent, participatory, secure and efficient by leveraging the advantages of open source software; the open source community can drive collaborative innovation for government; and the decision to use software should be driven solely by the requirements of the user.  

About Open Source for America:

Open Source for America is a coalition of industry leaders, associations, non-government groups and academic/research institutions organized to serve as a centralized advocate, to encourage broader U.S. Federal Government support of and participation in Free and Open Source projects and technologies.  Membership in Open Source for America is open to any individual or entity signing the campaign's mission pledge.  To learn more about Open Source for America, click here.  You can also follow Open Source for America on Twitter at https://twitter.com/OpenSourceGov.

About NC State's Center for Open Source Engineering:

The Center for Open Software Engineering performs basic research, education, and outreach to enable software technology gains and to bridge the gap between the state of the art and the state of the practice of software engineering in interdisciplinary application areas. We do so by understanding the needs of domain practitioners and by formulating, implementing, and validating effective software-intensive solutions.  The current primary domain of study is Health Care IT.  To learn more about the Center for Open Software Engineering, click here, or the center’s director, Dr. Laurie Williams, click here.

~ Coates ~