IEEE's Humanitarian Open Source

Abstract

IEEE has been developing organizational capability to create open source innovations for humanitarian needs since the 2004 Tsunami. In 2009, IEEE held the Humanitarian Technology Challenge (HTC); where one of the stated objectives was that the results would be broadly available to anyone for their use in providing humanitarian products or services. Since then, various Humanitarian Open Source activities have been sponsored by the IEEE, notably under the Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technology (SIGHT) program. This paper presents some of these activities, and their accomplishments, commenting its link to the global open source movement. It presents IEEE's open source licenses meant to protect IPR developed by IEEE volunteers under the humanitarian activities it sponsors. Finally, Open Standards and interoperability are briefly discussed in relation to IEEE's stated humanitarian goals.