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Library of Congress Explores Ways To Release OS Software
An anonymous reader writes "The Library of Congress has established an internal process to start creating more open source software which will make it easier for software developers and sponsors within the Library to produce software that can be freely redistributed to users worldwide. The Library has released some open source software to this point, concentrating on developing tools that support digital preservation processes, including the secure transfer of digital files. This includes the release of a full suite of digital content transfer tools that support the Bagit specification."
Didn't RTFA, did you?
BTW, They're designating the software created by staff as Public Domain in the comments, but in repositories that don't offer that category using the least restrictive category they provide, typically BSD.
Publications of the US Government are typically in the public domain.
I, for one, welcome our new code-sharing librarian overlords. For the most part code writ at taxpayer expence should be made available if possible so the taxpayers can use it for themselves - and other government agencies can as well without duplicating effort and expense.
I think this is great news, but what happens if inadvertently some of this software infringes on a patent or two?
How many Libraries Of Congress will the source code amount to?
One, by definition. This is going to be quite useful.
http://michaelsmith.id.au