Federal Source Code policy

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7 Notable Legal Developments in Open Source in 2016

In 2012 the jury in the first Oracle v. Google trial found that Google's inclusion of Java core library APIs in Android infringed Oracle's copyright. The district court overturned the verdict, holding that the APIs as such were not copyrightable (either as individual method declarations or their "structure, sequence and organization" [SSO]). The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, applying 9th Circuit law, reversed, holding that the "declaring code and the [SSO] of the 37 Java API packages are entitled to copyright protection." The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case, and in 2016 a closely watched second trial was held on Google's defense of fair use. In May 2016 the jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of Google...

Federal Source Code Policy Requires Agencies To Share Code

Nathan Eddy | Information Week | August 9, 2016

The objective behind the White House's Federal Source Code policy is to ensure all agencies make custom-developed source code available for re-use across government. The aim is to make the government work more like developers in the private sector and to encourage sharing and collaboration. The White House officially released its Federal Source Code policy on Aug. 8, designed to support improved access to custom software code developed by or for the US government...

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Final policy requires feds to publicly release 20 percent of code

Aaron Boyd | Federal Times | August 8, 2016

Nearly four months after issuing a draft policy to release most — if not all — code produced by government agencies as open source, the Office of Management and Budget dropped the final mandate on Aug. 8. The use of open source code for federal projects has been a major push from the administration over the last couple years and the new policy shows an effort for the government to abide by the same standards they espouse...

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OSEHRA Community Responds to the Federal Government's Proposed Open Source Policy

The OSEHRA community today submitted a response to the "Draft Open Source Policy for Federal Agencies" released by the White House on March 10. The policy was open for comments through today. This is a major milestone for the OSEHRA community as well as the open source community as a whole. Currently the US Government spends nearly a hundred billion dollars a year on software purchased from the private sector or procured from government contractors. Most of this software acquisition ends up in failure. President Barack Obama has made it a priority to shift technology acquisition policies to solve this problem and restore technology innovation by embracing open source.

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U.S. Government Launches Code.gov to Showcase Its Open-Source Software

Jordan Novet | Venture Beat | November 3, 2016

The White House today is announcing the launch of Code.gov, a website that shows off U.S. government open-source projects and offers relevant resources for government agencies. By launching this site the White House is hoping to improve public access to the government’s software and encourage the reuse of software across government agencies...

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White House Releases Draft Open Source Policy for Federal Agencies

And that’s why today, to deliver on the commitment made in the Second Open Government National Action Plan, we’re releasing for public comment a draft Federal Source Code policy to support improved access to custom software code. This policy will require new software developed specifically for or by the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across Federal agencies. It also includes a pilot program that will result in a portion of that new federally-funded custom code being released to the public.