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NASA Open Source Agreement

Open source software license

Field	Value
name	NASA Open Source Agreement
image	NASA logo.svg
caption	NASA logo
author	NASA
version	1.3
copyright	NASA
date	?
OSI approved	Yes
Debian approved	No
Free Software	No{{cite web
url	https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#NASA
title	NASA Open Source Agreement
work	Various Licenses and Comments about Them
publisher	Free Software Foundation
accessdate	June 17, 2009
GPL compatible	No
copyleft	No
linking	Yes?
website

The NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) is an Open Source Initiative-approved software license. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) releases some software (such as NASA World Wind and FRET) under this license.

Legislation and NASA policy

Publication of open source software fits in with Agency functions outlined under the National Aeronautics and Space Act, that is, to "provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof."{{cite web

The NOSA was a point of discussion for NASA's Open Source Summit in March 2011.

Reception

NOSA 1.3 has been approved as an open source license by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The Free Software Foundation, however, raises issue with the following clause:

G. Each Contributor represents 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.

The FSF states that "free software development depends on combining code from third parties", and because of this requirement that changes must be "original creation" the license is not a free software license.

In 2018 a consensus study report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine acknowledged that uncertainties about the interpretation of the license served as "a barrier to contributing to NOSA-licensed software."

References

[https://opensource.org/licenses Licenses & Standards] Open Source Initiative
[http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/worldwind Debian package description] for [[NASA World Wind]]. Retrieved on January 8, 2016.
"NASA - Open Source Summit 2011".
"Licenses by Name". Open Source Initiative.
(2018). "Open Source Software Policy Options for NASA Earth and Space Sciences". The National Academies Press.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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