[Esip-preserve] Stewardship Best Practices

[alicebarkstrom at frontier.com]

I suspect getting NOAA to agree would be even
more difficult than NASA.  As I recall, the CIO's
office in NESDIS didn't allow release of read
software for files.  Also, at least for NASA EOS
data, I believe the policy dictated that source
code had to be made available to "legitimate"
requestors.  Thus, NOAA has obtained code from
most of the EOS investigations of interest for
climate and passed that code on to contractors
such as Northrup-Grumman for inclusion in the
processing of data for NPP and whatever NPOESS
has become.

Bruce B.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher S. Lynnes (GSFC-6102)" <christopher.s.lynnes at nasa.gov>
To: "Curt Tilmes (GSFC-6145)" <curt.tilmes at nasa.gov>
Cc: "ESIP Preservation cluster" <esip-preserve at rtpnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 6, 2010 9:01:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Esip-preserve] Stewardship Best Practices

On Oct 6, 2010, at 7:25 AM, Curt Tilmes wrote:

> Looking over this a bit:
> 
> http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Interagency_Data_Stewardship/Principles
> 
> Here are some, perhaps controversial, proposals for addition:
> 
> Data Creators:
> 
> will release all software used in the processing of data used in
> scientific research. Even if the rights to use that software are
> restricted it should at least be available for inspection.

You mean the source code here, right?

While I applaud the intent, I can say (from personal experience) that navigating the legal / procedural labyrinth for any source code release is so time-consuming that this is currently impractical in many cases.  

To really make this workable, it would be helpful to get some kind of agency-level exemption to some of the standard release requirements for science processing code. A process similar to the NASA Document Availability Authorization would be more workable.

I wonder, is this as much an issue in the other agencies, like NOAA, USGS and EPA?
--
Dr. Christopher Lynnes    NASA/GSFC, Code 610.2, Greenbelt, MD 20771
Phone: 301-614-5185

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