Open Source Summit v3.0: Communities

Over the past few years, we have been working hard at NASA to modernize the way we approach software development. Open Source is a critical component to our strategy. In 2011, we started a conversation around open source in government and hosted a summit at NASA Ames Research Center to bring together leaders, policymakers, and developers into the same room to discuss how best improve the development and release of open source at NASA. The event resulted in 13 recommendations, which really shaped our strategy going forward.

The first summit was so helpful to the Agency that we wanted to hold another, but this time with a broader focus. In 2012, the summit moved to the Washington, DC area and the aim was to advance the use of open source software throughout a wider government audience. The Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the State Department joined the discussion. The highly interactive summit highlighted a number of real-world examples, and help everyone involved make forward progress towards the goal of helping to improve innovation in government while driving costs down.