OSRS is an acronym for "Open Science, Engineering, Research and Development Systems". The acronym OSRS has been around with our group since at least 2008 as a simple name to distinguish our focus from pure production. The OSRS name is not a company brand, but instead a declaration of our primary area of focus.
About
OSRS Open is an independent organization to foster open development and collaboration focused on the transition of new technologies to the enterprise as well as to emphasize research and development of new technologies. We serve as a forum for developers to enhance their understanding of the possibilities available in technology, while always pushing toward the horizon.
As the OSRS name implies, we focus initially on engineering and the sciences with the intent to bridge the gap between technical and enterprise computing.
What is OSRS Open
OSRS Open is a non-profit group that operates at a
What we provide
We host and steward open source code, open data specifications and bring agencies together to share data, practices and of course code. More specifically, we focus on advanced capabilities aimed at shaping the future of computing, not just the "cool stuff", but foundational capabilities and techniques. The OSRS Open board takes input from the community to shape priorities for future development efforts and champions the adoption of other software into the OSRS Open community.
How does OSRS Open Operate
All members of the OSRS Open organization have a say in operations via voting for members of the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is made of members from various organizations and individuals from our community. A large part of our operational model is adapted from the Apache ASF, with differences primarily related to our focus on R&D and computing futures.
Philosophy
We have a simple guiding principle: work with great people to do great things with no ego, while expecting that failure is the first step to learning. We believe:
- Shared ideas, technology and open communication are a key way to inspire innovation.
- Innovation isn't just incremental improvement, its the combination of evolution and revolution.
- Always aim for the horizon, always remember you can never reach it, so always adapt to the new horizon ahead of you.
- Just because something is popular doesn't mean its good, but it may also not be too bad. You have to look at it to know the difference.
- Many things are popular because they are new and hype is about the financial possibilities, not the intrinsic value.
- Don't focus on financial aspects of technology, but expect it will be important to others, that is neither good nor bad, just a reality.
- Even though communities overlap, they often will not communicate or understand the synergies they can achieve. Above all, we want to help bridge that gap.
- Great technology is useless if it isn't used.
- Let others use the tools and techniques they prefer, bring your own process (BYOP).
Services
We primarily steward the intellectual property of the technologies and source code artifacts produced by our community members. We also however...
- Facilitate Rapid Innovation Teams (RITs) lifecycles to investigate and quickly research and prototype new technologies.
- Find and manage hosting for data services on behalf of our members.
- Facilitate meetings for business process improvement, technology assessments, requirements and data modeling sessions.
- Help our members connect to each other to find capable staff to build new things.
- Help our members identify and connect to initiate cost-sharing for common development.
- Connect communities to each other by facilitating meeting and discussion opportunities.
Meet Our Team
Michael Corsello
Founding Member, OSRS Group
Mr. Corsello has 20+ years of experience in software engineering, geoinformatics and data analytics. He has a masters degree in Computer Science from George Washington University, a graduate certificate in Information Assurance and Computer Security also from GWU, a bachelor degree in Biology from the University of Central Florida and has a nearly completed doctoral degree in Earth Systems Science and Geoinformatics from George Mason University. He has worked for many organizations including Booz Allen Hamilton, Raytheon, NASA and Earthtech (now AECOM).
Tim Seiple
Founding Member, PNNL
Mr. Seiple has 10+ years of experience working as a Geologist and Geographic Information Scientist. He specializes in data modeling and processing, developing desktop and web GIS applications and tools, integrating GIS with environmental models, and performing advanced GIS analyses. He also has extensive field experience including monitoring water quality (TDG, CTD), conducting environmental site investigations, and performing site surveys (GPS, vegetation, and bathymetry). Aside from GIS work, Mr. Seiple uses his database and programming experience to develop software used to perform advanced risk modeling in support of Programmatic Risk Assessment for the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Seiple has a Bachelor’s degree in Geology and a Master’s degree in GIS and Remote Sensing. His primary research interests include developing models and applications to enhance decision support in the areas of environmental protection and risk management.
Christina McDonald
Founding Member, USNPS
Ms. McDonald is the Digital Asset Management Program Manager and a Software Engineer for the Resource Information Services Division at the US National Park Service.
Patrick Royer
Founding Member, PNNL
Mr. Royer is a geospatial scientist at PNNL.
Grant Fujimoto
Founding Member, PNNL
Mr. Fujimoto is a Analytics scientist at PNNL.
YOU
Member
You too can become a member of our team.
Membership
Membership in OSRS Open comes in two general flavors, contributors and board membership. Contributors are any organization or individual that provides content to OSRS Open projects under our contribution terms.
Contributors provide content in the form of code, documentation, bug or feature analyses. Contributors that provide code directly are considered "committers" and are provided access to our source code repositories.
Become a Committer
We welcome all potential committers that want to give back to our projects. OSRS Open is a meritocracy and not profit/commercially driven. That is to say that all of our works are driven by the people and organizations that commit to our code and our code is evolving to solve real world problems better. The more anyone contributes, the more access and responsibility they are given.
Start off by using our code base and providing feedback on our content on github. If you find areas where you or your organization can contribute, start the discussion with us to determine how to both implement code that fits with our architectures and how to ensure any code contributions will be compatible with our liberal licensing requirements.
If this is a good fit, you'll be a key contributor in no time. But even if you just want to use our code, you can still contribute by donating time to our open issues, or you can still sponsor us.
Sponsor our work at Patreon:OSRS Open on Patreon
Contact Us
We have no single physical brick-and-mortar location, but our members are distributed across the US from Virginia, Maryland and DC in the east to the mountains of Colorado and in Washington state in the west.
On github
Our home on github is the OSRS organization. Our projects are listed here. Please feel free to engage with us through github by participating in development, or by using our libraries. If you use our libraries, please acknowledge us as "Built using OSRS Open"
Other Mechanisms
While we have no primary facilty to visit, we are growing our visible presence online. We've been working together and in client datacenters for over a decade, and now we're starting to emerge to work with you.
Contact the "usual way" at: info at osrsopen dot com. Or just look online for us....
Find us on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/osrs-open/
Get an invite to our Yammer site at: https://www.yammer.com/osrsopen.com