In 2022, Kyle Cranmer initiated a conversation with NumFOCUS and the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) to explore mechanisms to improve academia’s engagement with the open source community. This led to two new initiatives: the NumFOCUS Academic Consortium and the idea for an Open Source Pledge that academic units would make to support open source software. However, it was not obvious what form this pledge would take, who would draft it, or how it would be implemented. ADSA has a proven track record of convening committees that take on similar tasks, and in April 2023, Micaela Parker convened the committe with the correspondence below:

I am writing to you as Founder and Executive Director of the Academic Data Science Alliance to invite you to be part of a new initiative we are supporting. As you are aware, scientific software is a fundamental component of modern research and engineering. Open source software, in particular, provides significant benefits for academic institutions’ research and educational programs. It is natural for academic institutions to support open source software and be an integral part of that community.

We invite you to join a new ADSA Open Source Software Pledge committee, chaired by Kyle Cranmer (in cc, previously at NYU, now at U. Wisconsin - Madison) with a representative from NumFOCUS, that will jointly craft a pledge for academic institutions with actionable recommendations and accountability for OSS support on their campuses. This pledge will include an optional path to membership in a new NumFOCUS Academic Consortium meant to facilitate academia’s engagement with the open source community and foster a virtuous cycle that yields better software and new opportunities for discovery and innovation.

The Committee: