NASA Releases 2017-2018 Catalog of Software For Free (nasa.gov) 71
mspohr writes: Eureka Magazine has a story about the latest NASA 2017-2018 software catalog. From the report: "NASA has released its 2017-2018 software catalogue free of charge to the public, without any royalty or copyright fees. This third edition of the publication has contributions from all the agency's centers on data processing/storage, business systems, operations, propulsion and aeronautics. It includes many of the tools NASA uses to explore space and broaden our understanding of the universe. 'The software catalogue is our way of supporting the innovation economy by granting access to tools used by today's top aerospace professionals to entrepreneurs, small businesses, academia and industry,' said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. 'Access to these software codes has the potential to generate tangible benefits that create jobs, earn revenue and save lives.'" Amazing amount of quality software... it IS rocket science. Further reading (and digesting): TechCrunch
'Scuze me? (Score:1, Insightful)
Eureka Magazine has a story about the latest NASA 2017-2018 software catalog. From the report: "NASA has released its 2017-2018 software catalogue free of charge to the public, without any royalty or copyright fees.
Seems to me the software was already paid for by me. Or does NASA think their budget grows on a money tree in space?
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Yeah. And the ISS was in part paid by me, so I want a ticket on the next ride there to inspect my property!
Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
But I think it is good when a government agency decides to give back to the public, stuff that lies outside of their normal operations.
Re:'Scuze me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. And the ISS was in part paid by me, so I want a ticket on the next ride there to inspect my property!
Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
Most appropriate response. [imgur.com]
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Yeah. And the ISS was in part paid by me, so I want a ticket on the next ride there to inspect my property!
The local municipal sewage plant was paid for by me. And the city would be happy to arrange an inspection tour.
But they'd still expect me to drive myself there.
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But they'd still expect me to drive myself there.
But you paid for the road. That's so unfair.
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But at least AC doesn't have to pay for the sky!
And now you've got the Firefly theme running through my head!
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>Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
That ought to be the default outcome however. If they want to keep something out of the public's hands - they should have to defend that decision and request a special exemption.
Your ISS example is silly though. The reason you can't demand a ticket isn't because you don't own a legitimate share in that great endeavour - but because the cost of getting you there would EXCEED your share. If you p
Re:'Scuze me? (Score:4, Informative)
The thing is, this is already default for NASA. NASA is far more open than ESA. They public domain everything they can, and are much more open about releasing raw data, sooner. ESA is the one that really needs to get past its closed culture.
I'm not quite getting the point of this "release", since I use a number of pieces of NASA software and have always been able to get what I need. I guess they're just taking down the request forms or something? The real problem IMHO has never been "getting it", it's been "getting it to work". They make some very neat things, but they have such small user bases that they're not well refined, and getting them to work on your platform or finding quality documentation can be a pain.
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Oh I know - I agree NASA is doing it the right way - my argument is that this should be the default for ALL software produced with ANY tax dollars - whether by a government agency or under a government contract. I would even extend it beyond "software" to "information".
In other words, I was arguing that the rest of government should copy NASA's policies regarding openness.
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Oh I know - I agree NASA is doing it the right way - my argument is that this should be the default for ALL software produced with ANY tax dollars - whether by a government agency or under a government contract. I would even extend it beyond "software" to "information".
In other words, I was arguing that the rest of government should copy NASA's policies regarding openness.
While I am in general agreement my concern is in some cases it would significantly raise the cost to the government since companies would now have to factor in the loss of rights to the software and thus potential future sales. Years ago I developed some courseware for the government which the agency that contracted it has full rights to its use. Had they said, "We will release it to the public free of charge" my price would have been significantly higher to offset any potential impact on revenue from other
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Well, in the process where an agency could apply for an exemption to the default rule they could certainly raise it if a supplier made such a claim. At that point they could consider
1) A different supplier
2) Developing it in-house instead (if it's cheaper than the revised price)
or if neither is viable - they may grant an exemption - or a temporary one which says the government will wait at least 5 years to make it public or something.
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Well, in the process where an agency could apply for an exemption to the default rule they could certainly raise it if a supplier made such a claim. At that point they could consider 1) A different supplier 2) Developing it in-house instead (if it's cheaper than the revised price)
or if neither is viable - they may grant an exemption - or a temporary one which says the government will wait at least 5 years to make it public or something.
True, but one problem is the procurement process. If it required allowing free public use by default the bids would already incorporate that so government would have no idea what the premium was; and once they open the bidding they have to either take the lowest bid from a qualified bidder or cancel the RFP and start the process all over which is very painful.
As for in house development, many agencies do not have the staff to do that and often hire contractors to do the development; which is one way to full
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My experience with software written for the government by contractors is that they charge big bucks for writing the software and fight to keep the copyright so they can sell it again and again even though taxpayers have already paid for it.
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Oh I know - I agree NASA is doing it the right way - my argument is that this should be the default for ALL software produced with ANY tax dollars - whether by a government agency or under a government contract. I would even extend it beyond "software" to "information".
In other words, I was arguing that the rest of government should copy NASA's policies regarding openness.
While I applaud NASA's actions, a quick browse of the catalogue shows a number of the items are for "U.S. Government Purpose Release" which precludes its release to the public, per NASA:
U.S. Government Purpose Release: This large, but restrictive, release category includes five subcategories. An SUA is required, and appropriate nondisclosure and export control provisions may be included. The following subcategories are included under this release category.
Beta Release: A limited release of the Software Code
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This is the third release of a catalog of available software... more new bits.
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"A work of the United States government, as defined by the United States copyright law, is "a work prepared by an officer or employee" of the federal government "as part of that person's official duties." In general, under section 105 of the Copyright Act, such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain."
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So the law already says essentially what I proposed. Cool.
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Just because something is funded by taxes doesn't mean that it automatically lands in the public domain. Sorry.
Well, actually, it did once. Back before universities routinely monetized their work and R&D was allowed to do things without guaranteeing a profit by next quarter. And everything the government did was expected to be privatized.
One of the first RDBMS's was a public domain NASA project (developed by Boeing, I believe).
Legend has it that Prime Computer was founded when a bunch of engineers at Honeywell got fed up with their employer's apathy towards developing computer systems in-house, took a public-dom
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You are free to go to the ISS at anytime you wish however you have to get there on your own. Just like Central Park in NYC or the museums in Washington, DC.
Re:'Scuze me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is, of course, why NASA keeps giving the software away to the public - who did, after all, pay for it. Their contributions to the rest of the economy has been pretty significant. There's hardly a data-center left in the world that doesn't have clusters. Big cloud providers like AWS utterly rely on them for reliability and performance scaling - and their early-use cases like building cheap super-computers for things like climate modeling, aerodynamic engineering or rendering awesome looking animated movies are all alive and well.
And that all started at NASA with the original Beowulf clusters - a technology idea they subsequently made freely available and became one of the original major growth-points for Linux in science and industry.
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Yes [slashdot.org], I can.
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You may have helped pay for the development, but publishing is a discretionary expense. Some agencies would say you can have it, but you need to pay for the manpower to get it into a publishable format. ($0.10 copying fee for a friendly and well-organized local government office, much much more for a query made by the FOIA which requires a lengthy search.)
I haven't actually heard of a super pricey information retrieval fee, but I'd be surprised if it hasn't happened.
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I've never seen a "per page" fee for electronic documents or software.
Thank you (Score:3)
I would just like to say thank you, and I hope that other government agencies worldwide contribute equally. Being born when astronauts were taking the first steps towards the moon I have always held NASA in high regard and it is fabulous that they keep impressing many decades later.
For North Korea... (Score:2)
(From the linked article)
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For a cruise misile "hit the building we were aiming at and not the hospital next door" counts as "safe landing". Sadly even by that definition the US's cruise misiles rarely "land safely". From which I can only conclude that NASA didn't write their software. NASA tends to land things safely far more often than not. They've had a few nice landings on MARS now for example - the ESA's last attempt went kerplatz.
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As long as ESA and NASA don't collab and some idiot uses imperial units, it should be fine.
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Oh right... I had forgotten about that little embarrassment until now.
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Initially they did collaborate on the lander but the NASA people had their funding cut and without NASA involvement the ESA people couldn't use the bits already worked on due to various patent agreements being with NASA.
Result - splat - kind of expected for a first of it's kind lander instead of being able to build on earlier success.
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For a cruise misile "hit the building we were aiming at and not the hospital next door" counts as "safe landing". Sadly even by that definition the US's cruise misiles rarely "land safely".
That's assuming that they weren't aiming at the hospital, which is not a safe assumption.
Even putting that aside, a drone should have an easier time landing on target than a missile.
Easy link (Score:5, Informative)
You can check out what is publicly/globally available on github: https://github.com/nasa [github.com]
On their main software page, there is a LOT of stuff that is by request only but github is all the easy to get stuff.
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I should add that "by request only" doesn't mean just asking. Here's what you agree to even for what is essentially a glorified graphing program:
"By accessing and using this computer system, you are consenting to system monitoring, including the monitoring of keystrokes. Unauthorized use of, or access to, this computer system may subject you to disciplinary action and criminal prosecution."
In saner times, I simply would have assumed this means they track keystrokes on their own system, which certainly isn'
Re:Any chance... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, NASA has always been terrible at public outreach. Anyone ever seen the NASA TV channel? Just terrible. There's no excitement in anything they make for the public, despite the fact that they're working in one of the most exciting fields out there. Contrast with what SpaceX does, where each launch is almost like a sporting event, with "newscasters" and "commentators", screaming crowds, HD footage from multiple angles, etc. That's PR. And I doubt they're spending a fortune to do so, versus what everything else costs in rocketry.
Perhaps the most exciting thing NASA does is their press conferences to announce findings (say, post-flyby preliminary results and the like). But I think only space geeks like myself can get excited about a NASA press conference.
Some parts of the US federal government are good at PR: The military is an obvious one - they work closely with TV and movie producers to get them enthusiastic and supportive. They manage it top to bottom, wanting to see whole scripts in advance to make sure that they portray the military in a good light - and if they do, they get access to locations, hardware, troops, gear, almost anything. They even require producers to have a minder.... er... I'm sorry, "technical adviser", who follows them around and (strike)makes sure they make it positive like they promised(/strike)offers "helpful advice". It's a sleek operation of mutual exploitation, where the military gets free PR and recruiting, and the movie makers get taxpayer-funded hardware, locations and manpower.
Not that NASA should go that far. But they should do a lot better than something with the quality of a late-night public access TV channel. They have amazing facilities, settings and people, and are doing exciting things. They should modernize their PR.
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SpaceX's broadcasts started out less watchable than a 12YO's Youtube channel but within a year had become slick and entertaining. NASA TV has improved somewhat over the years but still is nowhere as entertaining as it should be. I do feel for the folks at NASA though - their public outreach program suffers from underfunding and uncertainty so it's not entirely their fault.
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free software (Score:2)
3d models (Score:5, Informative)
Their collection of 3D models is nice: https://github.com/nasa/NASA-3... [github.com]
wishing for rant-free comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there even ONE slashdotter who's going to comment on the **contents** of the catalog instead of bitching about governments and copyright issues (of which they most likely know very little)?
I'd be much more interested in reviews/ ratings of software tools for various tasks than in what NASA allegedly is or isn't keeping from the public.
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I'd guess that the software would be invaluable if one happened to own a Martian rover...
But most slash dotters just hack web sites for a living.