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The US Department of Defense is in the process of releasing all of its custom software under Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses with a deadline of June for getting under way. Most of the barriers so far have been legal and policy ones, not technical.
As part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department has until June to start moving much of its custom-developed software source code to a central repository and begin managing and licensing it via open source methods.
The mandate might prove daunting for an organization in which open source practices are relatively scarce, especially considering that, until recently, there was no established open source playbook for the federal government. That's begun to change, however, with the Office of Management and Budget's code.gov, and its DoD corollary, code.mil, run by the Defense Digital Service (DDS).
The fact that such software is actually under public domain inside the US adds a small twist to the release process.
From Federal News Radio : Amid congressional mandate to open source DoD's software code, Code.mil serves as guidepost.
(Score: 2) by EETech1 on Sunday March 18 2018, @02:18AM (1 child)
If the government only used their modified GPL software internally, they would not have to distribute the changes correct?
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:57AM
Correct. [gnu.org]
(Although the definition of "the government" and "internally" might be interesting. If affiliated-with-the-government body A shares their code with government department D, who is to say that "A" and "D" belong to the same organisation? Something for the lawyers to have fun with!)