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Executive Summary We seek to establish a national program for research into the science of open source systems. Open source systems are beginning to appear in many diverse disciplines, though the area with perhaps the highest level of activity, visibility, and impact is free/open source software (FOSS) systems. FOSS systems are being researched and developed by fast growing communities of academic and industrial practitioners in different disciplines. However, FOSS systems are much more than just source code, or software applications; they are better understood as packages of interrelated social and technical resources that interact and overlap, and that can give rise to occasionally profound impacts and consequences. This report addresses and elaborates on the nature of FOSS systems in order to identify the questions and problems that will guide the future of research in this domain over the next five to ten years. How FOSS systems are developed, how people work at a distance to build them, how such work draws on surrounding webs of resources and socio-technical relationships, and how these systems evolve over time are of growing importance to the future of software engineering, education, innovation, science, society, and government. This report details the published research studies and the open research problems that describe the current state of scientific knowledge about FOSS systems. Yet as FOSS systems permeate more aspects of science, technology, society, and government, we will be limited in our collective ability to explain, rationalize, predict, control, evolve, or transfer how best to develop FOSS systems without the required investments of research studies, research infrastructures, and other resources needed to expand the scientific knowledge we have started to produce. This report is organized into four major sections. The first major section motivates a deliberate scientific study of FOSS systems. It discusses how FOSS systems are developed, why FOSS will help create the new scientific knowledge we now lack, and how such knowledge can be transformative as an engine of innovation in a growing number of application areas. This section details how FOSS systems and development practices are transforming research practices in many scientific domains and can contribute to resolving many outstanding issues in large-scale software engineering. FOSS systems are also transforming global software and Information Technology (IT) industries. The development and deployment of FOSS systems can further transform society and cultural practices. In short, FOSS systems and how they are developed is a rich, fertile area …