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 »
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