White House makes open source official, will launch Code.gov to share U.S. government software

[caption id=”attachment_20481” align=”alignnone” width=”1024”] Photo: White House/Pete Souza[/caption]

The White House released an official Federal Source Code policy (yes, it’s a .pdf) that green lights the use and free distribution of software code developed for and by the U.S. Government.

U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott also announced the future launch of Code.gov that will serve as a public gateway to access all U.S. Government code.

From the announcement:

By making source code available for sharing and re-use across Federal agencies, we can avoid duplicative custom software purchases and promote innovation and collaboration across Federal agencies. By opening more of our code to the brightest minds inside and outside of government, we can enable them to work together to ensure that the code is reliable and effective in furthering our national objectives. And we can do all of this while remaining consistent with the Federal Government’s long-standing policy of technology neutrality, through which we seek to ensure that Federal investments in IT are merit-based, improve the performance of our government, and create value for the American people.

Read the full announcement and join the Code.gov listserv (yes, a listserv).