Some public institutions are taking seriously the idea of being “open” to the public. Two examples: NASA and the Library of the Congress.
NASA
As reported by WIRED, the people of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration published their first e-book (they expect to create a list of e-books related to aeronautics available to the public). The book, “X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight“ by Dennis R. Jenkins is available as a pdf file or in a Kindle friendly format.
Library of the Congress
In their own words: “In the spirit of transparency and community, the Library of Congress has established an internal process to create open source software. This will make it easier for software developers and sponsors within the Library to produce software that can be freely redistributed to users worldwide.” The Library of the Congress announced the news by a press release. They plan to use, in any case, the most permissive license possible (there are also code not completely developed by the Library’s staff).
So, books published by a public institution being released to the public (there is not information about NASA’s e-book license), and software developed by the government (and in some cases for the government) is being released as Open Source. Maybe, it is the beginning of a new trend.
