Federal agencies must now share code with one another

Federal agencies must now share their own source code with one another. A bipartisan bill (H.R. 9556) requiring them to do came into affect this week.

This bill requires federal agencies to ensure that custom-developed code (i.e., source code that is produced under an agency contract, funded exclusively by the federal government, or developed by federal employees as part of their official duties) and certain technical components of the code such as architecture designs and metadata are (1) owned by the agency...