IST - Open-Source Software Lab

Welcome to the Open-Source Software (OSS) Lab!

Welcome to the Open-Source Software Lab! Our mission is to promote the advancement, development and widespread adaptation of Open-Source software across the College of IST, as well as across the University and World as a whole. Our group consists of Student Interest groups within the Open-Source Software Interest Group (OSSIG), Faculty Mentors passionate about open-source software, and external stakeholders as well.

Our goal is to increase the amount of Open-Source development done by students not only at Penn State within the College of IST, but across the Penn State Student Population as a whole, and more broadly speaking, across the world. We aim to promote this cause by offering development materials, lessons, and mentoring. We also strive to collaborate with students and faculty outside of the College of IST across departments, and to collaborate with external stakeholders outside of the university who are interested in the cause of Open-Source development. Furthermore, we also aim to promote the "opening" of software in general. In recent years, we have seen an extreme uptick in companies and organizations embracing Open-Source that previously did not, such as Microsoft.

Our Structure & Student Work Groups

As referenced above, a large part of the OSS Lab is the Open-Source Software Interest Group designed primarily for students and overseen by our Mentors. Within this group, we have structured it to consist of numerous smaller student work groups revolving around various subjects of interest regarding Open-Source software.

Our Areas of Interest

• Linux
• DevOps
• Web Development
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Open-Source SQL implementations such as postgreSQL
• And more!

More Information about our Interest groups can be found in the "Interests" tab.