[tayo42]

Using open source to judge quality seems wild. Maybe people just have no interest in maintaining an open source project. Looking from the outside at some of the stuff people put up with, it doesn't look worth it at all. I'll just work privately

[prepend]

This is a good point, but it’s all I can see. It’s not like there are famous NASA and NIST closed source software projects.

It’s hard to judge “great programmers” so I think the best is to proxy using whatever factors you have access to.

I guess it could also be books written and presentations given. Or contributions to other projects using nasa and nist addresses.

Point being, I don’t think there’s any evidence to think that nasa and nist have great progs.