Business case

ospo/business-case.md

@@ -16,15 +16,76 @@ crumbs:
 
 > context for your project, explaining the problem that it's meant to solve and how it aligns with organisation's vision and strategic plan
 
+An Open Source Programme Office (OSPO) is a body within an organisation to look after their open source strategy and operations. OSPOs has been widely adopted in the commercial world[^OSPO-commerce], governmental institutions and world organisations[^OSPO-public]. More recently, various academic and research institutions have also found the value of having OSPOs. Focusing on the latest, we can find research centres such as [CERN][ospo-cern] or [Space Telescope Science Institute][ospo-stsci] and universities like [Johns Hopkins][ospo-jhu], [University of California][ospo-uc] and [Carnegie Mellon University][ospo-cmu] to name a few from US, whereas in Europe we've got universities like [Trinity College Dublin][ospo-tcd] in Ireland, [University of Luxembourg][ospo-snt] and [ETH Zurich][ospo-eth] in Switzerland.
+
+<!-- Footnotes -->
+[^OSPO-commerce]: The two biggest OSPO networks in industry are: [OSPO Alliance][ospo-allience] supported by the [Eclipse Foundation][eclipse] and [TODO Group][ospo-todogrp] supported by the [Linux Foundation][LF]
+[^OSPO-public]: Covering this space there is the [EU OSPO Network][ospo-eu] lead by the [EC OSPO][ospo-ec] and the [Public Sector OSPOs Network][ospo-public]. They include OSPOs from [United Nations][ospo-un]; from country wide like [France government][ospo-fr] or the [Netherlands](https://opensourcewerken.nl/); cities such as [City of Paris][ospo-paris] or [Munich][ospo-munich]; and specialised public organisations like [Digital Service at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in US][ospo-cms].
+<!-- End Footnotes -->
+
+Though the goals of organisations across these domains differ when establishing an OSPO, they create a fabric that helps those organisations to collaborate and combine efforts to maximise the impact (and support) of open source software. Some activities that an OSPO may do are:
+
+- To advocate for Open Source practises between an organisation through community engagement;
+- To measure usage and dependency on open (and closed!) source software/hardware to increase impact and reduce risks;
+- To promote, guide and educate internal and external community members on open source culture from technical, social, political and economical perspectives;
+- To push policy forward that safeguards open source and protects technological sovereignty of the institution.
+
+Those activities, however, are not new to OSPOs. Over the years, different groups within organisations or wider institutions have been engaging on some of those activities. For example, Oxford University had a group named [OSS Watch][oss-watch] between 2003-2014 that provided unbiased advice and guidance on the use, development, and licensing of free software, open source software, and open source hardware. Similarly, the [Software Sustainability Institute][ssi] has been advocating for better software practices in research across the UK since 2010.
+
+
+[LF]: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/
+[eclipse]: https://www.eclipse.org/
+[ospo-allience]: https://ospo-alliance.org/
+[ospo-cern]: https://opensource.web.cern.ch/
+[ospo-cms]: https://cms.gov/digital-service/open-source-program-office
+[ospo-ec]: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/ec-ospo
+[ospo-eth]: https://transfer.ethz.ch/researchers/oss.html
+[ospo-eu]: https://static-page-bdf202.usercontent.opencode.de/
+[ospo-fr]: https://code.gouv.fr/
+[ospo-jhu]: https://ospo.library.jhu.edu/
+[ospo-munich]: https://opensource.muenchen.de/ospo.html
+[ospo-paris]: https://opensource.paris.fr/
+[ospo-public]: https://floss-pso.network/
+[ospo-snt]: https://ucospo.net/
+[ospo-stsci]: http://www.stsci.edu/ <!-- FIXME: It appears on archived OSPO++ page, but no link -->
+[ospo-tcd]: https://www.tcd.ie/innovation/for-trinity-innovators/open-source-programme-office/
+[ospo-todogr]: https://todogroup.org/
+[ospo-uc]: https://www.uni.lu/snt-en/
+[ospo-un]: https://undp.org/digital
+[oss-watch]: http://oss-watch.ac.uk/
+[ssi]: https://www.software.ac.uk/
+
 ## Why does UCL need an OSPO? / What benefits does it give?
 
+Open Source is a fundamental component of our research and university infrastructure. However, this is usually forgotten and considered as a given. We do not know how much we depend on it. Equally, we know very little about the social, research, and economic impact that the open source code generated by the UCL has. Contributing to Open Source projects requires more than technical knowledge, it is tied to social and economic aspects, and an OSPO helps to make it more accessible. An OSPO in UCL will benefit the following areas:
+
+- research
+  - Provide guidance with sustainability, community engagement and licensing.
+- education
+  - Train students and staff on the use and contribution of Open Source projects.
+  - Promote Open source alternatives to tools taught on courses to allow learners improve skills when losing access to closed source tools
+- infrastructure (HPC, Moodle, Portico, HR & Finances, Department administration)
+  - Provide support to open source tooling
+  - Enable cross-department collaboration
+- community
+  - Ease collaboration with different institutions for similar tasks (from research software to infrastructure)
+- policy
+  - Include Open Source solutions and technical sovereignty into UCL procurement,
+- impact
+  - metrics - what's created within/with help from UCL, what are we depending on. Attract funding and collaborations
+  - skills promoted will help students employment while also attract talent from open source communities
+  - gain technical sovereignty
+
+
 *mission statement*
 > You’ll need to define your project vision, goals and objectives.
 
 *explain how it fits a niche or serves a need*
 
 > what are the risk of not having one?
 
+It will be harder to support our community with what they need, they will reinvent rather than collaborate.
+
 ## How would it work at UCL?
 
 ### Plan