DISCUS as open source code?

Recently Jack Park from Iris Semantic Network left a comment asking, among other things, if DISCUS was going open source. This is an interesting question. DISCUS is currently under two patent pending processes. However, the current policies at NCSA, one of the DISCUS partners, is to push toward open source. We are currently finishing a first release of DISCUS International with support for English and Japanese. When it passes the release quality standards, some parts of DISCUS will be disseminated, may be as open source code. This is, however, an issue that needs to be ultimately discussed with the Office of Technology Management (the university office handling the DISCUS patent process).