NASA Launches 'Open-Source Science Initiative', Urges Adoption of Open Science

In a keynote at FOSDEM 2023, NASA's science data officer Steve Crawford explored NASA's use of open-source software.

But LWN.net notes that the talk went far beyond just the calibration software for the James Webb Space Telescope and the Mars Ingenuity copter's flight-control framework. In his talk, Crawford presented NASA's Open-Source Science Initiative. Its goal is to support scientists to help them integrate open-science principles into the entire research workflow. Just a few weeks before Crawford's talk, NASA's Science Mission Directorate published its new policy on scientific information.

Crawford summarized this policy with "as open as possible, as restricted as necessary, always secure", and he made this more concrete: "Publications should be made openly available with no embargo period, including research data and software. Data should be released with a Creative Commons Zero license, and software with a commonly used permissive license, such as Apache, BSD, or MIT. The new policy also encourages using and contributing to open-source software." Crawford added that NASA's policies will be updated to make it clear that employees can contribute to open-source projects in their official capacity....

As part of its Open-Source Science Initiative, NASA has started its five-year Transform to Open Science (TOPS) mission. This is a $40-million mission to speed up adoption of open-science practices; it starts with the White House and all major US federal agencies, including NASA, declaring 2023 as the "Year of Open Science". One of NASA's strategic goals with TOPS is to enable five major scientific discoveries through open-science principles, Crawford said.
Interesting tidbit from the article: "In 2003 NASA created a license to enable the release of software by civil servants, the NASA Open Source Agreement. This license has been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), but the Free Software Foundation doesn't consider it a free-software license because it does not allow changes to the code that come from third-party free-software projects."

Thanks to Slashdot reader guest reader for sharing the article!

Sounds about right, and typical

[drinkypoo]

Interesting tidbit from the article: "In 2003 NASA created a license to enable the release of software by civil servants, the NASA Open Source Agreement. This license has been approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), but the Free Software Foundation doesn't consider it a free-software license because it does not allow changes to the code that come from third-party free-software projects."

Specifically, the FSF says "The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your "original creation". Free software development depends on combining code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this." Neither you nor NASA can include anyone else's code in a NASA software project under this license! That's not just not a Free Software license, it's not even proper Open Source! It's a "we want to know who to sue" source license! What a total non-surprise that the OSI rubberstamped it. It has "NASA" on the tin, and they wanted to cuddle up to it in hopes that some relevance would rub off on them.

Here's some other relevant stuff in the license [spdx.org]:

F. In an effort to track usage and maintain accurate records of the Subject Software, each Recipient, upon receipt of the Subject Software, is requested to register with Government Agency by visiting the following website: _______________. Recipient's name and personal information shall be used for statistical purposes only. Once a Recipient makes a Modification available, it is requested that the Recipient inform Government Agency at the web site provided above how to access the Modification.

[Alternative paragraph for use when a web site for release and monitoring of subject software will not be supported by releasing Government Agency] In an effort to track usage and maintain accurate records of the Subject Software, each Recipient, upon receipt of the Subject Software, is requested to provide Government Agency, by e-mail to the Government Agency Point of Contact listed in clause 5.F., the following information: _______________. Recipient's name and personal information shall be used for statistical purposes only. Once a Recipient makes a Modification available, it is requested that the Recipient inform Government Agency, by e-mail to the Government Agency Point of Contact listed in clause 5.F., how to access the Modification.

Not sure WTF those blanks are about, is the idea they can fill them in with whatever they want later? Oh, I see, those parts can be customized for each piece of software covered by "this license", which means that there's actually the potential for an infinite number of versions of this license. So you can't ever just say "oh, NASA license 1.3, I know that" ... you have to read the license every time to see what they've done to it.

Anyway here's what the FSF is complaining about:

G. Each Contributor represents that that its Modification is believed to be Contributor's original creation and does not violate any existing agreements, regulations, statutes or rules, and further that Contributor has sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this Agreement.

It really does literally mean that you can't include anyone else's code in one of these projects, although it does explicitly grant you the right to include it in other projects:

I. A Recipient may create a Larger Work by combining Subject Software with separate software not governed by the terms of this agreement and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such case, the Recipient must make sure Subject Software, or portions thereof, included in the Larger Work is subject to this Agreement.

Worse, this is also not just a distribution license, it is a use and distribution license.

A. Terminatio

Re: Sounds about right, and typical

[reanjr]

I have not read the license, but if it only blocks contributions from other software and doesn't block you from using the software in other projects, then you can just fork it with a new license.

This is not fundamentally different from a corporation who only accepts code from their own employees, but then lets anyone else use the code how they see fit.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

This is not fundamentally different from a corporation who only accepts code from their own employees, but then lets anyone else use the code how they see fit.

NASA belongs to The People and they're setting rules that are going to make software development more expensive by prohibiting any foreign code contributions to NASA-licensed software projects. They will literally not be able to use any internet-sourced open source code in their software, as the license prohibits it!

Re:

[Registered Coward v2]

This is not fundamentally different from a corporation who only accepts code from their own employees, but then lets anyone else use the code how they see fit.

NASA belongs to The People and they're setting rules that are going to make software development more expensive by prohibiting any foreign code contributions to NASA-licensed software projects. They will literally not be able to use any internet-sourced open source code in their software, as the license prohibits it!

Not really. There are two ways to do that, by either incorporating it into a larger work, or by naming the owner of the rights to the OSS incorporated as a mod. In either case, you would have to get the copyright owner's permission to do so since the license is may be more restrictive than other OSS licenses in use. It my not bee free software but certainly is open source.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It my not bee free software but certainly is open source.

It's an open source license that's not compatible with any other open source licenses...

Re:

[Registered Coward v2]

It my not bee free software but certainly is open source.

It's an open source license that's not compatible with any other open source licenses...

Which is not unusual for OSS.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Right. Which is (to circle back around) why open source on its own is nearly meaningless, every license (or group of common licenses, anyway) becomes a separate reality. Realistically, requiring every author to assign copyright before they can use OSS means not being able to benefit from a great deal of it.

Re:Socket

[John.Banister]

So someone could write an original socket and let the user connect their modified NASA software to their modified 3rd party software, so long as the 3rd party also gives permission?

Re:

[geekmux]

This license is bad, and whoever wrote it should feel bad.

Feel bad? That's rich. This license is written by lawyers for lawyers, to protect the Greed that hired them. Just like every other license.

Not sure when people are going to accept that no matter what "free" delusions are sold with it.

Public money, public code!

[pitch2cv]

The FSFE, Free Software Foundation Europe, has a campaign on just that: to demand a legislation requiring all publicly funded software developed for public services be made available as Free and Open Source Software: https://publiccode.eu/ [publiccode.eu]

If we're paying for it, how can a company not share the code?

On another note, did you know all of FOSDEM's livestream and online conference since 2021 runs on Matrix?
https://matrix.org/blog/2023/0... [matrix.org]

I was there at FOSDEM when Matthew announced Matrix in a classroom, and later again when he presented v1.0 (iirc they were still wrapping it up, but the demo went OK) before ULB's Jason hall for that years keynote talk on Matrix - same room where NASA presented OSSI 3 weeks ago.

Re:

[sleeping cat]

A research grant or a contract may already specify the source has to be open. In most cases the only expected results are publications.

Researchers increasingly publish their data and code to enable scientific transparency, reproducibility, reuse, or compliance with funding bodies, journals, and academic institutions.[1 [doi.org]][2 [nature.com]]

For example, Papers With Code [paperswithcode.com] lists papers with code in machine learning, astronomy, physics, computer sciences, mathematics and statistics.