Research proposed open source as an analogous yet viable means to publish software, models, and data. COIN-OR was conceived as an initiative to promote open source in the computational operations research community and to provide the on-line resources and hosting services required to enable others to run their own open-source software projects.

The COIN-OR website was launched as an experiment in 2000, in conjunction with 17th International Symposium on Math Programming in Atlanta, Georgia.