Open Source Development at NASA

NASA has a special association with the principles of openness and transparency characteristic of the open source software movement.  Signed into law on July 29, 1958 by President Eisenhower, the National Aeronautics and Space Act created NASA and charged it with, among other things, providing for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof.  Manifestations of this duty can be observed across all of the Agency’s mission and business functions, from high resolution photography and reports on planetary discovery to financial transparency and independent oversight.

A particularly direct form of this transparency can be seen in NASA’s efforts to release open source software.  In 2003, NASA published a report assessing the formal barriers to distributing NASA software as open source and reviewing the state of open source licenses.  Subsequently, NASA developed an open source license and changed relevant policies to permit the release of NASA software under this license.  Several projects have since taken advantage of this work by releasing their code as open source...