Welcome to the Free the Code site. Free the Code is an initiative whose concept started with Open Source for America. And it’s a simple as this: We’d like government and the citizens, businesses and educational institutions it serves to get a bigger return on their technology investment and maybe even contribute to the innovation economy.
Okay that’s pretty broad, so let’s put a finer point on the idea. We think if the government pays for software – that’s either through its employes or paying contractors to develop new software – we think that should be made available for reuse and sharing. Could benefit other government agencies. Start-ups that could innovate upon. Non-Profits. Universities. And others we won’t think of now, but someone else will. But we do think releasing publicly-funded, custom software as open source is an idea whose time has come.
Our bright idea is not entirely new, In fact, some federal agencies are already doing this, but it hasn’t had much public discussion. That’s what FTC is about today; start the discussion, get people from different domains involved (beyond techies), refine the idea, and see what we can get done together.
We’re just getting started. But we hope you’ll stay tuned and participate as we begin a national conversation on the future of software in government.
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