The "State Research Institute Open-Source Council" is being expanded to jointly respond to technical and legal risks arising from the spread of open source and to strengthen the competitiveness of national strategic technologies.
The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) said Friday that it is expanding the "State Research Institute Open-Source Council" to systematically address complex open-source risks such as license disputes, security vulnerabilities, and copyright issues involving AI training data.
Open source has emerged as a key driving force behind national strategic fields including artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, aerospace, and defense, going beyond software development. Recently, dependence on it has been growing as it is recognized not merely as a development tool but as an essential element of "national technological sovereignty" that determines technological innovation and industrial competitiveness.
Open source has the advantage that its source code is publicly available for anyone to use freely, but it also carries risks of legal disputes from failure to comply with license obligations or exposure to security vulnerabilities. Recently, it has involved various risks such as copyright issues surrounding data used to train AI models. In particular, amid vast open-source usage and complex software supply chain environments, there are limits to individual research institutes managing these risks alone.
In August 2022, ETRI led the launch of the "State Research Institute Open-Source Council," a cooperation framework among government-funded research institutes, and successfully built a network involving eight institutions.
Starting this year, the council will be fully expanded into a "pan-state research institute system." Through this, ETRI plans to spread successful governance cases across all participating research institutes and solidify a nationwide open-source cooperation foundation linked to national mid- to long-term science and technology policy. The joint response system for technical and legal risks is expected to become more advanced, and it is anticipated to make a key contribution to securing sovereignty over national strategic technologies and creating a sustainable public research ecosystem.
"Centered on the council, we will create a research environment of mutual cooperation and sustainability, and contribute to realizing ESG management," said Lee Seung-chan, head of ETRI's Planning Division.
