The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has made some of its own software publicly available for the first time.
MoD experts have uploaded the software for a web application known as ‘Ideaworks’ to GitHub, a social coding website that allows users to edit pieces of software.
Ideaworks was developed by the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) to boost collaboration between workers, and is now hosting the code publicly through GitHub.
Dstl said in a comment on the website that the software was made publically available because it is simple, low risk and and has a wide potential benefit, particularly for those organising hackathons.
It added: "We don’t pretend that the code is the best ever written … but please use it as you see fit, file bugs and enhancement issues (of which we’ll be adding a few outstanding). We very much welcome pull requests."
Dstl’s chief technical officer, Andy Bell, said in a statement that the laboratory hoped the release would be beneficial for both the MoD and public users.
He said: "Sharing code in this way allows us to reach out to a wider population of experts, so that they can draw on our work, using the application to potentially improve their products allowing us to learn from their knowledge and expertise, possibly enhancing our code or finding and fixing any bugs."
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