The White House has published a new proposal titled “Federal Source Code Policy ? Achieving Efficiency, Transparency, and Innovation through Reusable and Open Source Software,” which calls on government agencies to publish their internally developed software under open source licenses. More specifically, agencies covered by the policy will need to open source at least 20 percent of their software within two years, and they are encouraged to go beyond 20 percent.
The proposal states, “Within 90 days of the publication date of this policy, the Administration will launch Project Open Source, an online repository of tools, best practices, and schemas to help covered agencies implement this guidance. Project Open Source will be accessible at https://project-open-source.cio.gov.”
The proposal also says that the policy will help save money by allowing federal agencies to reuse each other’s code.
