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."

Comments

Yeah, why not.....

[reality-bytes]

Yeah, why not throw all the money at a 100 ton turkey.

The shuttle, despite having fully completed its cold-war requirements is possibly one of the least practical / cost effective methods of LEO operations.

Its time for something new, cast aside sentimentality and get cracking with space-exploration.

I think its still a good idea

[HenryFjord]

Just the fact that a government agency is willing to release code which they have created is a very postive sign. It is expected that it would be impossible to apply something such as the GPL to code maintained by a public funded entity. But even with a license more restrictive than the GPL releasing this code will obviously do much more good than harm to the open source community.

I say kudos to them all

Re:I think its still a good idea

[Popageorgio]

I thought everything non-classified that the American gov't makes must go straight into the public domain.

They could work with Creative Commons.

[ron_ivi]

I hope they take a look at what rights they want to protect, and if it fits one of the existing Creative Commons licenses, use it.

More importantly, if it doesn't fit one, it does identify a need for another license, and they could work with creative commons to create a new license that fits that need that everyone can use.

Public Domain

[Bull999999]

I alway thought that any works done by the governemnt was considered public domain?

Re:Can't they

[segment]

They're caught up with too many pork barrel projects to focus solely on the shuttle. Mission to Mars, GTE.

What if the National Science Foundation got to directly and substantially compete with NASA, though? (As other examples there are also the Department of Defense (such as the Air Force or DARPA); the FAAs AST; and the NIH, etcetera.) The National Science Foundation has no research facilities of its own, and it conditions grant-awards on successful completion of a peer review process involving experts from academia, industry and the government. If the National Science Foundation (for example) got more funding allocated for its space endeavors along with the authorization to directly compete against NASA, it could utilize NASA centers as long as doing so withstands peer review scrutiny. This could boost NASA's public image, as people would be more likely to believe that whatever remains of NASA is not merely a product of executive or legislative pork-barreling, stacked evaluation boards, and bureaucratic inertia.

NASA's $13.6 billion annual budget dwarfs the $170 million budget for the National Science Foundation's space-related projects (which are presently focused merely on ground-based astronomy). The NSF therefore has to reject close to 75% of the space-related research proposals it receives. The Congressional Appropriations subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies decides how much money it will allocate to both NASA and the National Science Foundation. Why not boost the NSF's space budget and, more significantly, broaden the scope of space activities for which future NSF money is earmarked? The NSF could already compete regarding funding nanotechnology research, space plasma investigations (related to nuclear fusion, for example), and microgravity studies. Does it really make sense to maintain the presently large budget discrepancy? source)

Don't be fooled by a wolf in sheeps clothing. Rather crackedout Buzz Lightyear in a NASA digital editing room.

Master list of licenses and "features"

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

We need a comprehensive master list of licenses (I know lists of them exist - we need a master list) and what their provisions are.

A good idea would be a matrix that shows the licenses as rows and the provisions as columns.

That would make it a lot easier to choose a license or utilize a licensed product in a legal way.

Re:Why not use the GPL?

[turtledawn]

Ah. Thank you; this is a little odd, though not especially different from clauses I've seen in some sorts of freeware/shareware licenses. If that's the only odd aspect to the license, you'd think they _would_ just use the GPL and tack on a little comment before or after the license text making the request. But i guess that being a GA (gov. agency) they have to reinvent the wheel every so often.

Hmm, i wonder how clunky a NASA-developed wheel would be...