US government draft to publish publicly financed software under Free Software licenses

[François Revol]

On 16/03/2016 14:41, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
> At the end of last week, the White House published a draft for a Source
> Code Policy <https://sourcecode.cio.gov/SourceCodePolicy.pdf>. The
> policy requires every public agency to publish their custom-build
> software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as the
> general public to use, study, share and improve the software. As we want
> to push for similar policies in the EU, I would be very interested in
> your feedback. 
> 
[...]
> 
> The policy in general does not require that already existing
> custom—developed software be retroactively made available as Free
> Software if it was developed by third party developers (though it is
> strongly encouraged to the extent permissible under existing contracts).
> However, it is encouraged to be retroactively applicable for the
> existing custom-build software developed by agency employees in the
> course of their official duties.

Nice, that echoes the recent french CADA decision that recognizes
software source code as a "publicly discloseable document", that just
was validated by an administrative court:

http://www.april.org/le-tribunal-administratif-valide-lavis-de-la-cada-les-codes-sources-sont-des-documents-administratif
(sorry no translation yet)

On the 1st of April (no, that's not a joke), the tax administration will
release the source code of the tax calculation software they wrote, and
even organize a hackathon around it.

http://www.nextinpact.com/news/98981-le-fisc-ouvrira-code-source-son-calculateur-d-impots-1er-avril.htm

François.