Most of the discussion here has focused on NASA using OSS but it IMHO misses the point. The author is talking about publishing or releasing NASA-developed code, and what types of licenses are compatible with NASA's federally-mandated mission. NASA develops quite a bit of code, including generally-useful tools as part of larger projects. It would be great if this was easily accessible to the public.
It's disappointing seeing how much bureaucracy I'd have to go through to release our secure HTTP and CIFS proxy/portal. We don't have time to work on it any longer and superior commercial products exist now. So why not give our code away, let interested hackers turn it into something really cool. But it would be a nightmare of approvals, especially his citation from the NASA Procedures and Guideline ( http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/library/displayDir.cfm ?Internal_ID=N_PG_2210_001A_&page_name=main&search _term=2210
)
This release category indicates there are no export restrictions on the software and should be approved with great care and requires concurrence by Agency Export Control officials.
I don't expect officials are really gonna want to read our code to ensure there's nothing of value to cryptoporn terrorists.
So the code with just languish in our CVS repo, and die due to lack of interest.:-(
Genetic Images: Evolvo; Sims SIGGRAPH 10 years ago
on
Digital Darwin
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· Score: 2, Informative
I wrote (sarcastically) about doing this in the Home Brew Digest (HBD) back in 1992. Still tempted to give it a try: a clothes washer does almost all the stuff you need except throw away the spent grain.
Check the
article in the HBD Archives.
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It's disappointing seeing how much bureaucracy I'd have to go through to release our secure HTTP and CIFS proxy/portal. We don't have time to work on it any longer and superior commercial products exist now. So why not give our code away, let interested hackers turn it into something really cool. But it would be a nightmare of approvals, especially his citation from the NASA Procedures and Guideline ( http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/library/displayDir.cfm ?Internal_ID=N_PG_2210_001A_&page_name=main&search _term=2210
)
I don't expect officials are really gonna want to read our code to ensure there's nothing of value to cryptoporn terrorists.So the code with just languish in our CVS repo, and die due to lack of interest. :-(
It's based on Karl Sims work, which I saw presented about 10 years ago at SIGGRAPH. His page is at http://www.genarts.com/karl/
I tried implementing something in LISP then C based on Sims' work way back but got stuck; I'm glad evolvo has emerged so I can actually play with it.
I wrote (sarcastically) about doing this in the Home Brew Digest (HBD) back in 1992. Still tempted to give it a try: a clothes washer does almost all the stuff you need except throw away the spent grain. Check the article in the HBD Archives.