Opticks: Releasing a government tool to the open source community

Opticks is an open source ELT designed for analysis of imagery, video, spectral, SAR, thermal, and other spatiotemporal data. Opticks was originally developed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies corp. for the US Air Force. In 2007, Ball and the USAF released the core ELT and a number of plug-ins as open source software. This is one the first US department of defense sponsored tools to move from the closed source government domain to the unrestricted open source. This presentation talks about our experience with the process; what went smoothly and what caused delays. We will also discuss some of the latest developments in the military open source world.