News for and about the Internet2 community

[Lauren Kallens <>]

Penn State and Internet2 Announce Release of Academic File-sharing Open 
Source Code

AUSTIN, TX - September 28, 2004 - Plans for secure, high-powered, 
peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology for academia has come one big 
step closer to fruition when today Penn State and Internet2(R) announced 
the release of open source code for their collaborative software 
project, LionShare.

Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, LionShare merges 
electronic file-exchange capabilities with information gathering tools 
into one dynamic application.

Gary Augustson, Penn State's vice provost for information technology 
said, “This is a technology that promises to significantly improve the 
way institutions collaborate and support each other's academic 
endeavors, while simultaneously ensuring a secure authenticated 
computing environment for researchers who use its file-sharing 
capabilities."

This week's LionShare source code release will provide all interested 
programmers and developers with the opportunity to contribute valuable 
feedback and suggestions. At the same time, Lionshare partners 
including: Internet2, Simon Fraser University of Canada; and the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology will continue to fine-tune the 
project software which is slated for official beta release for 
universities and institutions this upcoming January.

"We knew we had something special here, but there was no way we could 
have anticipated the enthusiasm that LionShare has generated,” commented 
Michael Halm, the project's lead architect and manager. "Organizations 
from around the world have contacted us with questions about the 
technology and requests for the open source code release date, and many 
groups have expressed interest in collaboration. We're pleased that the 
code is now available."

Several educational and research institutions have expressed interest in 
Lionshare’s unique capabilities for resource exchange - including its 
ability to transfer audio, video, scientific simulations, text, 
documents, research papers, Web resources and a variety of other 
learning activities.

“LionShare has enormous potential," remarked Loukas Kalisperis, 
professor of architecture at Penn State. "With this single application, 
collaborating faculty can build digital repositories such as 3-D 
architectural image collections, Web-based video archives and art 
collections. Faculty will also have a range of tools at their fingertips 
for managing and exchanging their own personal collections, in addition 
to having access to large-scale data repositories throughout the United 
States and Europe."

Kalisperis is among a number of scholars and scientists who have offered 
their suggestions to team members as project plans unfolded this past 
year. Feedback from faculty at Penn State and other institutions is 
enabling developers to enhance the software's features with cutting-edge 
security, authentication, and password handling capabilities - plus a 
high performance text search engine and a technology (developed by Simon 
Fraser) that will make secure, single-search inquiries of certain 
worldwide digital repositories possible.

The continual dialogue with developers and potential network users has 
significantly furthered the development of the technology.

"With the source code release on September 30, interested programmers 
and application developers can now access the code to use and/or modify 
for their needs and specifications,” added Halm. “Feedback from 
programmers, as well as our peer institutions, will be essential in our 
efforts to further the development of the software. These efforts will 
culminate in the launch of an academic file-sharing network that 
researchers will be able to test and use this January."

To learn more about LionShare and to access the new open source code - 
or to join the developers community, go to 
http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/.


About LionShare
The LionShare project, funded by Andrew W. Mellon, is a collaboration 
between Penn State and partner organizations including Internet2; Simon 
Fraser University of Canada; and the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology's Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI). The LionShare project grew 
out of VIUS (Visual Image User Study), an experimental software 
development project designed to assist Penn State University faculty 
with digital file management.


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