recently a colleague sent an email out to an agency discussion group about open source, asking about rationales for open source release. his management didnt see the justification for his request to release his software under the NOSA. it’s interesting that although, as someone in the resulting discussion pointed out, NASA’s own charter states that it shall “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof”, open source software release is, in many instances, still seen as more of special case, than as a natural way to minimize overhead while maximizing the aforementioned dissemination (among other things).

last year i did a series of interviews with a cross section of developers, engineers, managers, and lawyers at Ames about open source. from there, i compiled the rationales they offered as the motivation for their interest in open source. i think it’s worth noting that none of these are unique to NASA per se, but i do consider all of them strong reasons in their own right for open source release and/or development, and certainly together they present a strong argument for encouraging open source release as long as there is no explicit reason not to. Read the rest of this entry »

i was in a meeting today where we were discussing the legalities surrounding open government-sponsored collaborative websites. that is, a NASA site facilitating open collaboration between NASA employees and non-NASA individuals or organization. what happens to intellectual property that comes out of that site? can the ideas be copyrighted? patented? should the ideas, content or inventions that come out of these collaborations be required to be openly accessible? can they be used commercially? and whatever decision is made, how is this communicated and enforced?

in general, we want to be as hands-off as possible. it should be up to groups and individuals collaborating on the site to decide when and if their content has gotten to the point that they want to (or that it justifies) being copyrighted or patented. however, as the sponsors of the time and resources that go into building and supporting this collaborative environment, NASA would expect a license to use any copyrighted or patented inventions or content.

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