Call for White Papers on a Future NASA Open-Source Policy

NASA has requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to investigate and recommend best practices as the Science Mission Directorate considers whether to establish an open-code policy, complementary to its current open-data policy. A study committee has been appointed and solicits white papers. The committee’s statement of
task, membership, activity schedule, and instructions for white papers are at:
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/CurrentProjects/SSB_178892

The goal of this call is to hear broadly from the community on any relevant issues, situations, or points of view, to ensure consideration of the full set of possible consequences of any new NASA open source-policy. For the purpose of this call, “open-code” and “open-source” refer to computer program source codes released publicly under an open source license, as defined by the Open Source Initiative: https://opensource.org/licenses

To be considered at the committee’s next meeting, white-paper submissions are due no later than January 12, 2018. The committee strongly encourages authors to submit white papers by this deadline, but papers will continue to be received until midnight on January 31, 2018.

Send questions about the project or white paper submissions to [email protected].