Automated distribution of ESA software

Abstract

Any engineer knows that reinventing the wheel does not make much sense for cost, time and quality reasons. Software engineers therefore take advantage of reusing existing code or products wherever possible to reduce development costs and enable real innovation. This means of efficiency is nowadays becoming ever more applicable in the aerospace domain, in particular for the European Space Agency. Therefore, corporate wide tools and processes have been brought into place over the last five years to manage, as a high priority topic, the related risks and hidden costs of reuse, while still leveraging efficiency through the use of proven standard software solutions and tools. This paper describes the Agency's legal and technical Intellectual Property Rights and Licensing management framework, the related different contractual and licensing aspects as well as the upcoming challenges and outlook to optimise the Agency's product lifecycle management.