As part of its activities, OMII-UK will facilitate the development of open-source software to support its various e-Science user communities - ranging from domain specific end-users and application developers, generic service developers and service providers. These activities and priorities will be defined through the OMII-UK Users' Forum and User Groups. The listed projects may range from funding community developers (e.g. to contribute specific functionality, to improve robustness, provide documentation, etc...) or for us to simply host information about the various projects allowing users to contribute comments and provide feedback on the use and effectiveness of the software or tool.

By funding developers within an open-source project OMII-UK is able to ensure that the software contains the functionality required by its user communities. These 'Commissioned Software Projects' will have deliverables defined by OMII-UK to meet the needs of particular projects or communities and will form part of our roadmap of future developments. Additional functionality contributed by community developers may also form part of our future release from these projects. More information on how to obtain OMII-UK funding to support the development of specific functionality can be found here. The further development and support of the software may continue with active OMII-UK funding if there is continued demand for new functionality from the OMII-UK user community.

Once the new functionality has been developed and integrated into the project, support may continue within the community funded by OMII-UK, be transferred to OMII-UK staff or left to the open-source developers within the project. OMII-UK's continued engagement in any project will be driven by the demand for its use by the OMII-UK community.