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NASA Open Source License Still Up For Discussion

Posted by timothy on from the tax-dollars-want-to-benefit-the-commonweal dept.

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."

5 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why not use the GPL? by DAldredge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because then closed source companies would not be able to use the code, and they helped pay for it.

  2. More licenses... by koody · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Now we are going to hear a whole bunch of silly comments like "Just release it to public domain" and "why not gpl". If you would have RTFAs you'd know that nasa has some internal requirements for anything it releases such as
    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.

  3. Two Words: Public Domain by Tassach · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Any unclassified intellectual property produced with taxpayer money should automatically be in the public domain, period, end of story. If a contractor puts patented code into a publicly-funded project, they are automatically granting the public a perpetual license to use that patent. Yes, this means they are granting a license to their competitors, but they are also getting back permission to use their competitors' patents. Since all the citizens paid for it, it belongs to all the citizens equally.

    --
    Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
    1. Re:Two Words: Public Domain by ortholattice · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Good luck getting contractors to write code for the gov't then...

      These days I think they'll have a lot of luck getting contractors to write code for the gov't. Besides, why is it any different from any other work for hire?

      And as an employee of said contractor, who wouldn't have any copyright interest in whatever I produce anyway, I think I might be more motivated to produce better work if I knew it would ultimately be subject to public scrutiny and benefit the public good. Compare that to dedicating your life to writing code that will be secreted away in some closed-source product with no acknowledgement whatsoever to you other than a paycheck that lets you survive. The thought of such a dismal and pointless existence is kind of depressing.

  4. what is this utopia you hail from? by johnpaul191 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    that's like saying the public owns the airwaves (see other FCC story from today)

    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 .... and i just don't see that happening here too soon.

    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.