NCSA NEWS

PITAC Panel Urges Development of Open Source Software

released October 24, 2000

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) recently released its report on open source issues. The panel's full report is available as an Acrobat Reader pdf file at http://www.ccic.gov/ac/pres-oss-11sep00.pdf.

The open source movement seeks to make software codes available to the programming community and thereby enable the community of users to build on, and continue the development of, software programs.

PITAC's open source panel was asked to chart a vision of how the federal government can support open source software, and then to define a policy framework for accomplishing these goals. The panel was also asked to identify policy, and legal and administrative barriers to the open source movement. Finally, they were asked to identify the role of public institutions in open source economic models.

The panel had three major recommendations. First, the federal government should encourage the development of open source software as an alternate path for software development for high-end computing. The government should also allow open source development efforts to compete on a "level playing field," the panel said. Finally, an analysis of existing open source licensing agreements should be undertaken, and the results should be distributed to all agencies funding high-end computing.

Alliance Strategic Advisor Larry Smarr and Susan Graham, professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, co-chaired the PITAC open source panel.

 

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