NASA unveils 'community hub' for open source

NASA is expanding its open government efforts with the addition of yet another site to the open.nasa.gov family of websites. Code.nasa.gov launched in "early alpha" Jan. 4 with a focus on providing access to current NASA open source projects, a guide to NASA's open source release process and a forthcoming forum tool for project collaboration.

"We hope to lower the barriers to building open technology in partnership with the public," wrote William Eshagh, one of the open.nasa.gov blog authors.  

NASA expects the new site to become a community hub for open source projects. Once the forum is up and running, the agency's open government team will begin work on a third phase, the incorporation of development tools into the forum platform.

Distributed version control, issue tracking, continuous integration and documentation are among the additions expected for phase three. It will culminate with the complete integration of tools, service and process chain, explains Eshagh in the post.

In August 2011 NASA unveiled a catalog of open data with the launch of data.nasa.gov. The site includes a directory of datasets, tools and a data-quality reporting mechanism.

For more:
- visit code.nasa.gov
- read the announcement on the NASA blog

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