#Welcome to Code.mil - an experiment in open source at the Department of Defense!

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) faces unique challenges in open sourcing its code. Unlike most software projects, code written by U.S. Federal government employees typically doesn’t have copyright protections under U.S. and some international laws. This can make it hard to attach an open source license to our code.

So, we’re trying something a little different here.

We're looking for your comments on our proposed open source license agreement. You can submit a public comment by opening a GitHub issue on this repository by the end of March.

##Build something with us.

The DoD is charged with protecting our citizens and national security. We have an incredibly diverse portfolio spanning from communications, logistics, education, healthcare, and even the next generation of GPS (yes, the GPS!) that supports billions of people across the globe.

We need your help in contributing to our projects to build better products and services for the American people.

##Connect with us.

Meet with developers across the DoD who have been tasked with America’s highest priority missions and help build upon their work. We believe that software created by the government should be shared with the public, and we want to collaborate with civic minded peers to make this happen.

##Make us better.

We’ve drafted LICENSE-agreement.md so the DoD can use widely adopted licenses, even where we may not have copyright. This lets us harness the depth and breadth of talent in the open source and free software communities to improve our software and make our code available for public use.

We want your help to make the open source agreement better. We encourage everybody to open an issue (or a pull request!) with your suggestions before we finalize LICENSE-agreement.md by the end of March and open source our projects!