NASA boldly goes to the open-source frontier

NASA announced a new website that will catalog and expand the agency's open-source projects and entice public participation, according to the Open.NASA blog.

The new site, code.nasa.gov, will roll out in three phases, writes William Eshagh, an Ames Research Center technologist working on open government. The initial phase, launched Jan. 4, features a directory of NASA's open-source projects as well as guidance on how to participate in the process and who to contact. "By elucidating the process, we hope to lower the barriers to building open technology in partnership with the public," write Eshagh.

Unlaunched phase two will feature forums to discuss open-source policies and projects. Phase three will include NASA creating and hosting tools for successfully developing open projects. NASA's history of collaboration with the open-source community includes OpenStack, a scalable self-hosted cloud computing project.