The government policy on open source software (OSS) is available from the e-government unit of the Cabinet Office. Further information is available from the Open Source Initiative.
Publicly funded R&D projects which aim to produce software outputs should specify a proposed software exploitation route at the start of the project. At the completion of a project, the software should be exploited either commercially or within an academic community or as OSS. Note that the policy on exploiting R&D software does not apply to software developed in the area of defence, national security or law enforcement. It also does not apply to software developed by trading funds.