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Git is an extremely fast, efficient, distributed version control system ideal for the collaborative development of software.
GitHub is a cloud based Git service platform that enables collaboration and repository management. Open source repositories are free and unlimited.
Why not? Think about why we have proprietary software. Google doesn't share the code powering its search algorithm for fear that a competitor could benefit. That's their secret sauce. It'd be like Coca Cola sharing its secret formula. But outside certain military contexts, with public code, there's no competitor. In fact, quite the opposite's the case. If agency X writes a better way to store and publish content, and agency Y adopts it, that's a good thing for both the agencies and for the American people. It creates an efficiency across government that would not otherwise exist. Put another way, we're all on the same team here.
But open source isn't just sharing code among agencies. Imagine if agency X's content organizing code is posted online and a non-profit uses it to launch a new initiative, or a startup uses it to launch a new venture. Again, the agency is not in competition with the innovation and we all benefit.
Last, in that same example, let's say as that startup is adopting Agency X's code for their own use, they discover a bug, or a great new feature and contribute it back. Agency X, Agency Y, a startup and a non-profit are now all better off than if Agency X had not released the code.
More broadly, publicly funded code, is well, the public's code. It'd be like building a highway, but saying only firetrucks and police cars can use it, even though that's only a fraction of its potential. We see this most analogously with research grants in the scientific, academic, and medical communities, and the requirement to publish scholarly works and research findings that result from public funding.
- Open Source for Government A collaborative resource for government employees looking to participate in the open source community - by Ben Balter, Executive Office of the President, Presidential Innovation Fellow