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Collaborating with companies

Scope

Companies might be interested in collaborating or even just benefiting from your open-source project. CERN has support structures for such CERN-hosted projects: the KT group is experienced in setting up and guiding such collaborations.

The benefits

The use by companies might make your project more visible; it might give credibility to your project. It can encourage existing contributors to support the project's long-term sustainability.

The company might want to invest, either financially (paying for a developer or designer in your organisation), through in-kind contributions (their designers/developers provide regular open-source contributions), or through guidance (such as involvement in the project steering board).

The challenge

Expectations from commercial partners are sometimes in conflict with how open-source projects are managed in the scientific environment: time scales, response times, appreciation of what is critical, short-term commitment, and decision processes are often surprisingly different. It helps to have regular meetings with commercial contributors, ensuring a low-latency feedback loop and allowing for mismatches in expectations to be aired.

Investment can come with an expectation to participate in the project's evolution. The degree of influence should be agreed on.

CERN specifics

According to the CERN Convention, CERN "shall have no concern with work for military requirements" i.e. CERN cannot work on any kind of military project. The term 'dual use' refers to software that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. If you see clear dual-use applications of your project then please contact the OSPO.

To help overcome the potential challenges between science and industry mentioned above, CERN open-source projects can consider hosting third-party employees (for example domain experts or technology experts from companies) to work on open-source projects, provided there is a formal agreement or contract in place between CERN and the company. In such case, the [EXTERNAL-PROJ]((https://cds.cern.ch/record/1694098/) affiliation type can be used.

The alternative is to set up a collaborative R&D agreement between CERN and the company, whereby the company can (co)fund resources providing milestone or lump-sum payments. These funds allow CERN to hire personnel for the execution of tasks in the project. This can be beneficial for instance to keep a project member around for longer, especially if the company does not plan to "own" deliverables.

In both cases, please consult with the CERN Knowledge Transfer Group.

Working with companies on open-source hardware (OSHW) projects

Because commercial partners play such an essential role in OSHW, it is good practice to involve them in the projects as soon as possible. It is also good to select companies which are already operating in the domain you are interested in. For example, if you are designing an Analogue-to-Digital Converter (ADC) board, it is a good idea to get in touch with companies commercialising ADC products. Maybe you know these companies already because you have already bought Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products from them.

Selecting these companies as your partners of choice has several advantages over going with companies which just produce hardware (without going into any given domain):

  • The companies can participate in design reviews (and be paid for it) so that you get good ideas early on.
  • They can then commercialise the hardware, which can be convenient even for you. You then get the best of both worlds: the "unboxing" experience of COTS products (including good documentation, support, etc.) and the absence of vendor lock-in because all design files are open source.
  • Companies can then provide support to other clients who buy products from them. This unburdens the designer from these support tasks, making the open-sourcing effort scalable. Oftentimes, the success of a project is a mixed blessing: the designers are happy to see the impact of their designs but also very busy answering questions and requests for help. With COTS OSHW, companies take a leading role in the support of the products they sell, and designers can focus on design tasks.