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NASA Ames Gets OSI Certified

Posted by timothy on from the you're-paying-for-this-microphone dept.

Lunchy writes "A long standing monument to the growth of research and development in Silicon Valley, the NASA Ames Research Center has done advanced research in the area since 1939. Originally, the center focused on aircraft (and dirigible) research but it is now a high-tech computer science center. The open source community may be interested to know that NASA Ames is now OSI Certified and is releasing some of their software under open source licenses."

4 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Good news by mwheeler01 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think this is pretty good news. The more big government agencies that work with open source the better the backing will be when something like software patents come center stage in the supreme court.

    --
    Pretty widgets? What pretty widgets?
  2. CFD codes, etc? by 4of12 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Historically, a lot of interesting developements in computational fluid dynamics, particularly compressible aerodynamics, have come out of NASA Ames.

    I didn't see any of those codes showcased on the webpage, though:(

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    "Provided by the management for your protection."
    1. Re:CFD codes, etc? by chris_mahan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      from what I understand having looked at the various project (CODE looks interesting) my impression is that they need help, because the projects are very complex and they probably can't dedicate the manpower needed to see them through.

      On the other hand, it would be rad for street cred if _your_ code was used in a spacecraft.

      --

      "Piter, too, is dead."

  3. The sign of the times by jgardn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    With the funding of both manpower and pure intellect of the Ames research center, we are gaining a huge improvement to our resources as open source developers.

    I won't expect a drastic increase due to this particular news anytime soon. These scientists and many scientists like them have been contributing before Bill Gates learned to crawl. I do expect more research centers to begin actively endorsing open source and moving away from proprietary licenses.

    If all the major universities and research centers adopted an open source strategy, then all the corporate research centers would have to follow suite, or be cut off from their developments. If all the corporate research centers are doing open source, then all new software will be open source.

    This is another step towards total world domination.

    I think RMS is finally seeing his vision come true. Kudos to RMS! May Free Software live forever!

    --
    The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.