We have been invited by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to submit a Letter of Interest (LOI) to their Open Source in Science program. With the support of @Rory , the Advisory Committee, and CS&S, we centered our proposition on the intersection of AI, open source, and sustainability in the context of OpenRefine.
The draft LOI is available here for review and comment.
We are still finalizing the operational details regarding outcomes, project duration, and budget.
This LOI connects to recent discussions we’ve had around AI and open source in the forum:
With this proposition, we want to explore whether providing the right contributor framework can help non-developer users build extensions and customizations, accelerating innovation and increasing OpenRefine’s relevance for their communities. We want to understand how to adjust our contribution structures and governance to better support AI-generated contributions. What does this change for community management and contributor support? What should we prioritize for new non-developer contributors (prompting guidelines, testing workflows, community guidance, etc.)?
Thanks for taking the time to review this. I’m looking forward to the conversation.