The US Department Of Defense Announces An Open Source Code Repository (defense.gov)

"The Pentagon is the latest government entity to join the open-source movement," writes NextGov. An anonymous reader quotes their report: The Defense Department this week launched Code.mil, a public site that will eventually showcase unclassified code written by federal employees. Citizens will be able to use that code for personal and public projects... The Defense Department's Digital Service team, whose members are recruited for short-term stints from companies including Google and Netflix, will be the first to host its code on the site once the agreement is finalized... "This is a direct avenue for the department to tap into a worldwide community of developers to collectively speed up and strengthen the software development process," a DOD post announcing the initiative said. The Pentagon also aims to find software developers and "make connections in support of DOD programs that ultimately service our national security."
Interestingly, there's no copyright protections on code written by federal employees, according to U.S. (and some international) laws, according to the site. "This can make it hard to attach an open source license to our code, and our team here at Defense Digital Service wants to find a solution. You can submit a public comment by opening a GitHub issue on this repository before we finalize the agreement at the end of March."

Comments

Re:What's wrong with public domain code?

[djinn6]

This.

The GPL prevents a company from taking open source software developed by enthusiasts, making a few small changes, then charging for it. But here, the government developed the software by charging (in the form of taxes) both individuals and businesses. It makes sense that the code they create should be free to use by everyone. Attaching something like the GPL to it would mean lots of businesses can't use the code without also open-sourcing their own proprietary code.