The parts that face outward

Tools we depend on, released for anyone to depend on.

Where an internal tool has no strategic sensitivity, we publish it under a permissive licence with the tests and the failure cases intact. The bar is that we must still be using it ourselves; we do not release abandonware as generosity.

Preserving records nobody is funded to keep.

Recovery and preservation of scientific and industrial records at risk of loss: degraded tape, orphaned formats, institutions that closed without a custodian. Recovered material is returned to its originating community first and to the Archive second.

A published process for telling people their systems are broken.

We report vulnerabilities we find in systems we review, on a published timeline, with a named contact and a commitment not to sell findings to anyone. Researchers may report to us on the same terms; we do not pursue good-faith reporters.

Funding for work whose payoff is further away than a grant cycle.

Four to six fellowships a year for researchers whose questions are too slow for conventional funding. No deliverable is required. Fellows retain their results; we ask only that negative findings be written down.

Access to equipment that should not sit idle.

Cryogenic, metrology and long-baseline capability at our sites is made available to external researchers during unscheduled periods. Time is allocated by a standing committee and is not sold.