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NASA Goes SourceForge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hey-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

refactorator writes "We have a lift-off! The NASA Ames Research Center has open sourced Java PathFinder , a JVM that is an explicit state software model checker, all written in Java. For the first time, the complete master development site of a live NASA software engineering project is hosted on SourceForge. Read the official press release for details. The team around John Penix, Willem Visser, and Peter Mehlitz fought long and hard to get the development hosted outside of NASA, to enable true collaborative software development. Now show the government that it works - join the fray. May Java PathFinder boldly go where no NASA program has gone before." (Both Slashdot and SourceForge are part of VA Software.)

2 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. NASA has been on sourceforge before by Filiks · · Score: 5, Informative

    NASA WorldWind has been on SourceForge since September. Though most development happens over IRC.

  2. Re:Why isn't more government stuff open source? by DrZZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read up on the Bayh-Dole Act. In the US at least, inventions created using government funds (either grants or contracts) by default are owned and administered by the grantee or contractor, not the government. I laugh when people talk about the drug companies "stealing" government funded university research because the universities are the most agressive people out there patenting research and trying to hit drug companies up for big bucks to license the patents. Work done by actual government employees can certainly be patented, but obviously in that case the patent is owned by the government. Work done by government employees can NOT be copyrighted, which can lead to problems when trying to get government involved in GPL'd projects. NASA has a lot of contractors that that are still looked on as "NASA", so I don't know whether these guys are government or contractors.