What OSU Open Source Lab does

The OSU Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) is a nonprofit infrastructure-hosting organisation operating as a unit within Oregon State University's Center for Applied Systems & Software. Headquartered at 224 Milne Computer Center, 1800 SW Campus Way in Corvallis, Oregon, with a second site in development at Oregon's State Data Center in Salem, the lab provides managed and unmanaged hosting services to qualifying open source projects at no cost. Its hosted portfolio spans more than 309 open source communities, ranging from tier-1 Linux distributions (Debian, Fedora, Gentoo) and major foundations (Apache Software Foundation, Linux Foundation, GNOME) to developer tooling (Node.js, Docker, Kubernetes, LLVM, PostgreSQL) and media projects (VideoLAN, Xiph.org).

OSUOSL's technology stack is centred on a multi-architecture virtualisation platform. Core infrastructure includes an 8-node OpenStack (Ocata) cluster with Ceph storage, an 8-node Ganeti cluster with DRBD-backed storage used for long-running VMs, and 90 OpenCompute servers donated by Facebook in 2015 housed in three OCP racks for CI/CD workloads. The lab supports x86 as well as specialised AARCH64 (ARM64), POWER/OpenPOWER, and IBM Z (s390x) architectures, exposing an OpenStack API for dynamic resource management. Supporting services include a 50+ Gbps FTP mirroring cluster (~11TB, ~100 projects), Nagios/Prometheus/Grafana/Munin monitoring with PagerDuty alerting, Jenkins/Buildbot/GitLab CI options, Mailman mailing lists, dedicated MySQL/PostgreSQL database clusters, co-location, and rdiff-backup-based disaster recovery — all managed via Chef configuration management.

The business model is donations-based with zero direct revenue from hosted projects. Hosting is provided free to projects that follow an open development model and use an OSI-approved licence, and staff evaluate requests for impact to the open source community. Operating expenses (bandwidth, power, hardware refresh, staffing) are covered by donations from individuals and companies worldwide plus in-kind hardware contributions; no commercial pricing, contracts, or revenue figures are disclosed. Go-to-market is community-led through the osuosl.org website, online request forms, and direct engagement with OSS communities.

Name

OSU Open Source Lab

Legal name

Oregon State University Open Source Lab

Website

https://osuosl.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

OSU Open Source Lab is a nonprofit unit of Oregon State University that provides free, professional-grade hosting, FTP mirroring, and CI/CD infrastructure to qualifying open source projects across x86, AARCH64, POWER, and IBM Z architectures, serving communities such as Debian, Fedora, Apache, GNOME, Kubernetes, and Node.js.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Source Infrastructure Hosting

NAICS

Computer Facilities Management Services (541513)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Hyperscale & OCP Server Designs (HDABADAB)

Keywords

• Open source hosting
• FTP mirroring services
• CI/CD infrastructure
• Virtual machine hosting
• Co-location hosting

Headquarters

HQ city

Corvallis

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Infrastructure, Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Supply Chain

Revenue model

1. Donations and Sponsorships: OSUOSL provides hosting services thanks to donations from individuals and companies around the world. Without these donations, they would not be able to provide hosting services to the open source community.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels2 records

Core offering

OSL provides free infrastructure hosting for qualifying open source projects, including general managed/unmanaged hosting (VMs, websites, dedicated hardware), co-location, FTP mirroring with 50+ Gbps capacity, email/mailing list services, database hosting, monitoring, and backups. It also offers specialized multi-architecture development hosting on AARCH64, POWER/OpenPOWER, and IBM Z/s390x platforms, plus Jenkins-based CI/CD for open source projects using OSI-approved licenses.

Product overview

OSU Open Source Lab is a nonprofit organization at Oregon State University providing infrastructure hosting services for the open source community. The core offering consists of General Hosting services (managed/unmanaged hosting for websites, VMs, and dedicated hardware) combined with specialized architecture-specific hosting including AARCH64 Development Hosting for ARM64 platforms, OpenPOWER Development Hosting and POWER CI for Power Architecture projects, and IBM Z Development Hosting for s390x platforms. Supporting services include FTP Mirroring with 50+ Gbps bandwidth capacity, Email Services (mail relay and Mailman mailing lists), Website Hosting (PHP, Python, Ruby), Database Hosting (MySQL, PostgreSQL), Co-Location Hosting, Monitoring Services (Nagios, Prometheus/Grafana, Munin), and Backup Services. The infrastructure runs on OpenStack Ocata with KVM hypervisor, supplemented by Ganeti clusters for stable long-running VMs, all managed via Chef configuration management.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• General Hosting Managed and unmanaged hosting services for websites, virtual machines, and dedicated hardware provided to qualifying open source projects.
• AARCH64 Development Hosting AARCH64 (arm64) architecture hosting that lets open source projects develop and test on the ARM64 platform using KVM-based virtual machines powered by OpenStack.
• OpenPOWER Development Hosting OpenStack-based POWER architecture hosting that enables open source projects to develop and test on the Power Architecture platform in a PowerLinux environment.
• POWER Continuous Integration (CI) OSL-managed Jenkins service hosted via the OpenStack cluster that gives open source projects easier access to the POWER architecture for continuous integration workloads.
• IBM Z Development Hosting IBM Z-based server hosting that provides open source projects access to the s390x architecture via Jenkins.
• FTP Mirroring High-bandwidth FTP mirroring service backed by three servers with over 50 Gbps total capacity, hosting approximately 100 projects across around 11TB of disk space.
• Email Services Mail relaying with spam and virus tagging combined with Mailman-based mailing list hosting for open source project communication.
• Website Hosting Dynamic backend server support hosting for open source projects requiring PHP, Python, and Ruby environments.
• Database Hosting High-performance MySQL or PostgreSQL database hosting on a dedicated cluster of database servers for open source projects.
• Co-Location Hosting Physical server hosting for open source projects that require more than virtual machines, with limited space, power, and cooling availability.
• Monitoring Services Real-time monitoring using Nagios with PagerDuty alerting, Prometheus with Grafana for metrics, and Munin for trend graphs.
• Backups Disaster recovery focused backup services using rdiff-backup for file storage and additional tools for database backups.

Quantifiable outcome

• 309 open source projects hosted
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers15 records

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration10 records

Feature8 records

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Linux Foundation: The Linux Foundation supports the open source ecosystem through hosting, infrastructure, and event support for projects like Linux, Kubernetes, and CNCF. Comparable to OSUOSL as a major nonprofit open source infrastructure provider, though at significantly larger scale and with a broader mandate including vendor neutrality and training.
• Open Infrastructure Foundation (OpenStack): The OpenStack community's host foundation, supporting developers, infrastructure, and events for the OpenStack ecosystem. Directly comparable to OSUOSL in mission — providing community infrastructure for a flagship open source project — though OSUOSL also supports many projects beyond OpenStack itself.
• Internet Systems Consortium (ISC): ISC is a nonprofit that develops and supports critical open source internet infrastructure including BIND DNS and Kea DHCP. Comparable to OSUOSL as a nonprofit infrastructure provider that operates and hosts critical open source services relied upon globally.
• Apache Software Foundation: The ASF hosts and provides infrastructure for hundreds of open source projects including HTTP Server, Kafka, and Spark. Comparable to OSUOSL in providing infrastructure hosting for major open source projects, though ASF primarily runs its own infrastructure while OSUOSL is one of the providers used by ASF and similar projects.
• Software Freedom Conservancy: Conservancy provides fiscal and infrastructure support to over 40 open source projects including Git, busybox, and Selenium. Comparable to OSUOSL as a nonprofit providing organizational and infrastructure support to open source projects that cannot easily incorporate themselves.
• Software in the Public Interest (SPI): SPI is the nonprofit fiscal and infrastructure sponsor for Debian and other major open source projects. Highly comparable to OSUOSL — a small nonprofit providing hosting, fiscal sponsorship, and infrastructure services to open source communities, with overlapping customer base (Debian is hosted by both).
• CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation): CNCF, part of the Linux Foundation, hosts infrastructure for Kubernetes and the broader cloud native ecosystem. OSUOSL hosts Kubernetes mirroring, making CNCF both a peer and a customer; comparable as a nonprofit open source infrastructure provider at much larger scale.
• Internet Security Research Group (ISRG / Let's Encrypt): ISRG operates Let's Encrypt, the world's largest free certificate authority, as a nonprofit. Comparable to OSUOSL in operating critical internet infrastructure on a nonprofit, donation-supported basis with a community-driven governance model.

Broad incumbents

• GitHub: GitHub provides free hosting, source control, and CI/CD to millions of open source projects. While not a nonprofit, GitHub is the closest commercial analog to OSUOSL's hosted projects model — many of OSUOSL's customers (Debian, GNOME, Node.js, Docker) also rely on GitHub for source control and CI.
• Wikimedia Foundation: Wikimedia Foundation operates massive data center infrastructure to host Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, relying on donations. Comparable to OSUOSL as a nonprofit operating large-scale infrastructure for open content/projects, though at vastly greater scale and with proprietary infrastructure rather than providing multi-project hosting services.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/osuosl
• Facebookfacebook.com/osuosl
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/oregon-state-university-open-source-lab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about OSU Open Source Lab