[amsat-bb] AMSAT Open Source Policy

[Joseph Armbruster]

Michelle / Bruce (et al),

Per your comments in "[amsat-bb] Who I'm voting for (long)", i'd like
to pull the Open Source / ITAR Conversation into a separate thread,
because I think it's a good discussion to have.  It's really two
separate discussions but they do overlap now and then (and sometimes
in non-obvious ways).  I have independently dealt with the DDTC and
gone through the export permitting process for defense articles,
however I have never done so for AMSAT.  What is your perspective on
some of these questions:

1) How does AMSAT benefit by pursuing an open source policy?
2) What are the disadvantages of AMSAT pursuing an open source policy?
3) Say a new project was about to start, where should all the design
files, source code files, presentations, virtual machines, etc...
live?
4) What license would the items be released under (this one will be
interesting to me)?
4.a) Will the license be Free in a FreeRTOS or CGAL sortof way, where
it's free for non-commercial use?
5) How can satellite security be mitigated if the source is in the
public domain?

Those should be enough questions to kick off a conversation about it.
Also, there appears to be at least some AMSAT (related) code and such
up on the net already, it seems:
https://github.com/FaradayRF/Fox-1-MPPT
https://github.com/ac2cz/FoxTelem
https://github.com/phase4ground

It would be beneficial to hear-out what existing AMSAT engineers have
experienced:
6) Are you satisfied with the way AMSAT development currently takes
place or do you feel there is a need to change development practices?
7) Do you think AMSAT would benefit by adopting an open source policy
where all materials are placed in the public domain?
8) Can you see any landmines or pitfalls from doing so (technical,
legal, etc...)?

I wanted to ask about this, since it's mentioned constantly, but
OpenSource is a reasonably loose term that means different strokes to
different folks.  So, I at least wanted to ping everyone to learn
Exactly what they believe it means and ping the existing team to
determine their thoughts.

Oh, try not to backquote the email responses, I am numbering the
questions, so you can respond to the ones you want to respond to, as
you wish.

Joseph Armbruster
KJ4JIO