This policy will accomplish the following objectives:
Provide a policy to agencies19 on considerations that must be made prior to acquiring any custom-developed code;
Require agencies to obtain appropriate Government data rights to custom-developed code, including at a minimum, rights to Government-wide reuse and rights to modify the code. Agencies shall make such custom-developed code broadly available across the Federal Government, subject to limited exceptions;20
Require agencies to consider the value of publishing custom code as OSS;
Establish requirements for releasing custom-developed source code, including securing the rights necessary to make some custom-developed code releasable to the public as OSS under this policy’s new pilot program; and
Provide instructions and resources to facilitate implementation of this policy.