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NASA Open Source License Still Up For Discussion
Russ Nelson writes "There's been plenty of heated discussion about the NASA Open Source License, but although the OSI board approved five licenses and sent back seven, the NASA License is still up in the air, so to speak, hehe."
I have written several apps that use it. I honestly think it's the best or at least second best (behind the BSD license).
Use the GPL -- it's there, it's already done, and it saves our money as taxpayers.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
just throw everything into public domain, so they can spend their energy where it's really needed? Like getting the shuttle flying again?
What?
Why not put all software funded with public monies into the public domain so that both private enterprise (Closed source projects) and open source projects can benefit from it equally? I don't understand why publicly funded software should be "forced" to participate in the "viral" nature of the GPL? Am I missing something here or is this not a legitimate objection?
NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software. See 4.B.
This is just an example, and the reason why they can't release as PD.
Whe shouldn't be complaining about the amount of energy (and money) being used on devising yet another license, but be glad that a large institution like NASA is willing to do everything it can to be OSI compatible when it releases its source code.
Even if this process will slow down the release, use tax payer money on lawyers etc, this is a one time cost, at least if done properly. Hopefully it will function as an example to other government instances and maybe those instances will be able to release their source code under that license once it's ready.
My personal hope is that we will gain a new accepted license to last beside the MIT, BSD, Apache, GPL and LGPL licenses that all government instances are free to use (government source license?) as it will be accepted by nasas lawyers.
The only thing I fear that people will see this GPL compatibility as a waste of time and money, and release it under some falf assed license that will only cause problems and incompatabilities (Sun's license, XFree's proposed license, old apache license etc etc).
Now quit whining about how they should just release it under public domain, and be grateful that they are wasting your money on something that may benefit you directly.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Since this is the continuation of a previous
article, and NASA's already said that the GPL
(nor other current licenses are adequate)
It's very redundant to suggest they use the GPL.
It's offtopic to criticize the moderation system
in an article about software licenses.
And it's a troll to say that the moderator
is wrong, when clear as day they are right, it IS
redundant.
or that the politicians are public servents in that they work for us
or that the cops work for you! try telling them of that. it never works on COPS
sorry, it's a saturday night and i'm home sick.
i agree with you in principle, but i only see it being a blanket rule with some sort of time delay (making the code somewhat outdated). i would think it would make the government use only open source software
at least NASA is trying some sort of open source type thing. it's more than exists now, and if it works out for the greater good of all it will only help the cause.