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NASA Prepares to Open Source Code

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the reaping-the-rewards dept.

comforteagle writes "According to this story at O'Reilly, NASA is looking for approval for their own open source license. The NASA submitter (lawyer of course) states that none of the current licenses meet their needs, but more interesting is that NASA needs a license at all. It makes one wonder what we, and other space agencies, might see coming out off NASA. It's also nice to see code that taxpayers paid for anyway being released for their use too. There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software. X Prize participants maybe?"

4 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Government Copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    You are basicaly correct.

    U.S. Code Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 101:
    A "work of the United States Government" is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties.
    and from Section 105:
    Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
    Although I will say that NASA seems to act like it owns the copyright on the images it produces.
  2. Nothing new... by vistas · · Score: 5, Informative

    For over 30 years NASA code was available through a program called COSMIC which was administered at the University of Georgia.

    http://www.cosmic.uga.edu/

    In fact for awhile they operated out of one of the many buildings previously occupied by the 40 Watt Club

    Since 1998 the code has been available through the Open Channel Foundation

    http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/cosmic/

  3. Re:Absolutely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Hey, for all of you out there who are in this position...

    Please contact a NASA center and start asking around about doing joint research. NASA has a lot of research funding that requires joint work with a university, but you've got to hook up with the right researcher to get it. Every NASA center has an office that will help you find the people most likely to help you.

    Believe me, if you need that image processing code and you are a university, a joint research agreement will get you a lot of help. If you need some other kind of code, and you think NASA has it, start calling around! It may be a bit of work, but you'll be surprised how eager many NASA researchers are to work with you.

  4. NASA/USGS Image Processing Software by dsoltesz · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is probably the package you are looking for: Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers. It's been distributed freely for many years, and is, indeed, public domain. It's funded by NASA for use by NASA-funded researchers and the planetary science community in general.

    Note, Isis 3.0 has not been released yet, look for the beta in coming months - look at Isis 2.1 for the stable release. Download/Install instructions are on this page: Isis 2.1 Installation Guide.

    Automatic mosaicking is generally done using the spacecraft positioning information. Automatic registration? It doesn't exist (yet). Registration involves varying levels of human intervention, and when some level of automation is achieved, it's mission-specific and under special circumstances. Isis is primarily a cartographic package - IDL is generally used for statistical work.

    Another image processing package that's public domain is USGS MIPS. It's a (non-NASA) terrestrial image processing package that evolved from the same roots as Isis, so you'll find it has many of the same capabilities.

    I don't know what other NASA packages there might be out there like this, if there are any. I'll ask around.