https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/12/17/curl-supports-nasa/

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/02/07/closing-the-nasa-loop/

Their process for validating software doesn’t have a box for “open source”, and basically assumes it’s either purchased, or contracted. So someone in risk assessment just gets a list of software libraries and goes down it checking that they have the required forms.

As the referenced talk mentions, the people using the software understand that all the testing and everything is entirely on them, and that sending these messages is bothersome and unfair, and they’re working on it. Unfortunately, NASA is also a massive government bureaucracy and so process changes are slow, at best.
The TLAs don’t generally help NASA, and getting them involved would unfortunately only result in more messages being sent.

As for contributions, I think that turns into an even worse can of worms, since generally software developed by or for the US government isn’t just open source, but public domain. I think you’d end up with a big mess of licensing horror if you tried to get money or official relationships involved. It’s why sqlite is public domain, since it was developed at the behest of the US.

Mostly just context for what you said. NASA isn’t being arrogant, they’re being gigantic. Doing their due diligence in-house while another branch goes down a checklist, sees they don’t have a form and pops of an email and embarrassing the hell out of the first group.

The time limit thing is weird, but it’s a common practice in bureaucracies, public or private. You stick a timeline on the request to convey your level of urgency and the establish some manner of timeline for the other person to work with. Read the line again, but extremely literally: “we have a time frame of 5 days for a response”. “Our audit timeline guessed that it would take a business week for you to reply, so if you take longer we’re behind schedule”. The threatening version is “your response is required on or before five business days from the date of this message”.
The presumption is that the person on the other end is also working through a task queue that they don’t have much personal investment in, and is generally good natured, so you’re telling them “I don’t expect you to jump on this immediately, but wherever you can find a moment to reply this week would keep anyone from bothering me, and me from needing to send another email or trying to find a phone number”