NASA Prepares to Open Source Code

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?"

Comments

space agencies in other countries too?

[xot]

with me being in another country,would i be able to use the [OPEN] source code for my government space agency? Would the US govt permit that, nasa being a govt agency.
They would probably only release code which would not benefint most people don't you think? ;-)

Imagine a Beow...

[qtp]

Nasa seemed happy releasing code under the GPL for quite some time, and I find it odd that that is changing now.

Ever use a network card under Linux, much of the networking code came from NASA (mostly from Donald Becker).

Still dreaming about that Beowulf cluster? That also came out of NASA.

Perhaps the lawyers felt left out, so they're trying to do thier part and look useful. Why would NASA find that a license that has served them well for years needs replacing? Any lawyers opine on the new license yet?

About time

[Adam_Trask]

I have collaborated with NASA scientists, and you would be surprised how difficult it is for me (not being a NASA employee) to get the code written on NASA machines, even for the same project! They have to go thru a lot of (and i guess, agonizing) paperwork before they release any NASA-grown software. It has been easier for me (and them) to reinvent the wheel more than once at my lab.

For those wondering about the software produced, they employ folks from all branches of knowledge. Except finance, me thinks.

Re:Government Copyright

[Sepodati]

They are public domain unless there are security reasons to not release the code. I just went through this with a program I wrote for DOD. Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), you can request the source code to any program. Not saying they'll approve it, but unless there are "national security" type reasons, they should. In order for me to get a copy of my program to continue to develop and distribute on my own, I had to do a FOIA request on myself. :)

---John Holmes...

Re:Government Copyright

[djcinsb]

But I'm sure there are some private contractors somewhere along the line, and so what about their software?

That is exactly the point here. I'm working as a contractor on one of the pieces of software that started this effort. Basically, we'd like to release the software as open source so that we can get universities and others involved in the project, but still retain some level of control over it (and get some free publicity at the same time).

The goal isn't to keep others out of the process -- it's to get others involved, while making sure the final software product is of high quality. After all, if the software you're building is being used to fly spacecraft, you want to be sure it gives accurate answers.