It started when Gentoo reached out to the open source community for help - it needed more infrastructure, and OSU provided it. Gentoo, which was already popular with the open source community at OSU, is an ideal system for many developers because it allows them to install their own meta-distribution. Without the OSL’s hosting capabilities, projects like Gentoo would have to scale back to the point that service to developers would disappear, or degrade to the point where it’s too hard for developers to work with.