Derek Morr, a systems design specialist in ITS' Emerging Technologies group, has helped to pioneer the open source frontier at Penn State. Because of his participation in the OpenSolaris project, Derek was able to contribute to OpenSolaris by working with Penn State's Intellectual Property Office (IPO), which has established a technology transfer process to protect the University from liability.
The IPO is developing a general process for contributing to technological projects. Due to the unique nature of open source projects that originate outside of the University, the IPO and Penn State's legal representation must assess each project's license and policies. These steps are necessary to guarantee that Penn State is protected from intellectual property litigation.
Derek participated in the technology transfer vetting process prior to submitting his code to the OpenSolaris project. All of the code Derek wrote for OpenSolaris is related to using custom hardware to accelerate cryptography. Cryptography is central to computer and network security for access control and maintaining security and identity protection. Derek further explains his contributions to OpenSolaris:
"Certain systems with processors from AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) or VIA (VIA Technologies, Inc.) have specialized hardware that greatly accelerates common security tasks, such as encrypting data. These capabilities can be useful on web and file servers, for instance, because they make the server more efficient and use less power. I've written software to support these abilities for the Solaris operating system."
Open source projects are crucial to information technology at Penn State and beyond. Contributions to open source projects benefit everyone using these technologies. James Leous, a team leader in Emerging Technologies, adds that Penn State's "ITS infrastructure is highly dependent upon open source software. It is only fitting that we can give back through our participation with open source projects. By employing properly vetted contributor agreements and approved licenses, we can participate in the OSS community while still preserving Penn State's intellectual properly rights."
It is important that members of the Penn State community are aware of intellectual property issues. Faculty, staff, and students who conduct relevant and applied research central to the University's educational experience are encouraged to learn more about technology transfer.
More information is found at the Senior Vice President for Research Web site at http://www.research.psu.edu/tt/, and inquiries may be directed to Dr. Ron Huss at rjh22@psu.edu.