Most DOE contracts (the ones the government has with the university or consortium running the lab) usually say something to the effect of “unless you can prove

Most DOE contracts (the ones the government has with the university or consortium running the lab) usually say something to the effect of “unless you can prove this source code is marketable/SBIR worthy, you can keep it private or open source it (but not under the GPL). There’s exceptions, but the reasoning was also there to say that _other_ contractors should retain the ability to modify source code and similarly not release it (presumably defense was my guess). So the bar has been high to keep it private for $$$ reasons, but you could always keep it private for any other reason. DOE Code is the program that ostensibly tracks the open source software, usually just through github organizations. OSTI is the division that tracks all IP and research.