The OSL mission is to develop science and technology for computing with large-scale and pervasive hardware and software systems, to enable more productive computing and software development, and to foster economic development in the State of Indiana. Work in the Open Systems Laboratory (OSL) is motivated by the changing nature of modern information technology systems.

For pervasive systems to interoperate seamlessly, standardization is needed. All pervasive systems need to talk the same language. Standardization is complicated in today's market-based economy but can arise in several ways: government mandate, industrial monopoly, or open standards, to name a few. As might be expected, the OSL advocates the latter and is working to create open source software tools to bring this about.