A new institute for open source research, collaboration, and innovation opened its doors in Canberra today.

The $2.3 million Open Source Institute (OpenSI) at the University of Canberra, in collaboration with the ACT Government and NetApp, an American data storage and management company, was launched this morning.

OpenSI will act as an innovation hub for the ACT and surrounding region, as well as a national and international leader in open source technology. The Institute will research open source technologies and provide practical work-integrated-learning opportunities for the University of Canberra’s undergraduate IT students.

Open source is a software distributed with source code, designed to be publicly accessible, so anyone can examine, change, and distribute it. The estimated global market size for the sector was valued at US $27,729 million in 2022, and it is expected to reach US $75,210 million by 2028.

Research at OpenSI will fall under four themes: data solutions at scale, cyber security and privacy, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and open source business models.

The partnership will fund an open source-specialised Professorial appointment, three Higher Degree by Research (HDR) scholarships, and three research projects.