17 ms·

If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

1138 points by jrepinc 8y ago

devinjflick 8y ago
Yeah! NSA fork over those hacking tools!
- tombert 8y ago
  In a bit of fairness to the NSA (never thought I'd say that), they did give us SELinux, which I think was overall a net good.
  - precurse 8y ago
    Is it though? In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it since it can cause random issues. i.e. The Percona XtraDB install guide. I find that it's way too complicated of a layer that most people can't/won't learn. Compare this to the OpenBSD pledge and unveil which doesn't get in the way, and there's no way to disable them. If you make something overly complicated, with the ability to disable it all too easily, then it won't get used.
    - bubblethink 8y ago
      >In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it That is generally bad advice then. selinux is used by Android and Fedora (and hence RHEL & CentOS). selinux can break things, but it is quite stable these days at least for the distro supported packages. The downside is that anything outside the distro packages will likely have no support or will run unconfined. OpenBSD unveil is still new and will face similar challenges in that it will cover the base system well, but for ports, it will be up to the port maintainer to implement it.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- saagarjha 8y ago
  As an aside, NSA is releasing GHIDRA next month: https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us19/agenda/sessions/16608-Come-Get-Your-Free-NSA-Reverse-Engineering-Tool https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us19/agenda/sessions/16...
- baroffoos 8y ago
  NSA hacking tools do regularly become public. Just not intentionally.
maerF0x0 8y ago
Also of concern is a tragedy of commons like issue where those who contributed no funding are able to get the software for free. For example if a piece of city focused software is FOSS and then a bunch of other cities choose to consume it but not contribute to the funding or code.
- maxvu 8y ago
  I think that's a poor application of tragedy of the commons. Also, in your example, I don't know how other cities' use would impede the funding city's use.
  - MiddleEndian 8y ago
    In theory you might get a situation where several cities try to wait each other out for similar tasks, hoping another city will buckle first and fund it.
  - x0x0 8y ago
    I worked on image analysis software in a wetlab for a particular type of microscopy. They are in just this position: the lab builds and sells software. The fees are low -- on the order of $10-$15k/license. They use the proceeds entirely to fund ongoing development of the software. And the simple fact is, without these license sales, they don't have the resources to fund development. The software is open source in the sense that the licensees are given the source. If the lab has to give the software away, all development ends, unless you have $300k/year of grants sitting around.
    - Nullabillity 8y ago
      This is the same bullshit excuse people use to justify subscription licensing. If they can't get the interested labs to contribute towards the development without the coercion of a commercial license then it sounds like it's either done, or the development roadmap is misaligned with the users' goals. In either case, stopping the abusive current practices would be an immediate improvement for everyone involved.
- 8y ago
ecshafer 8y ago
I am an open source advocate, but I don't really agree here. Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Here are some cases where closed source software, with some security by obscurity could be helpful. Another example would be some software around designing nuclear systems. But as an example maybe a software funded by the national weather service to run simulations, that aught to be open source (perhaps something like that exists and is open source, that's not my area). But a counter argument to mine could be that some software that is security focused might be more secure if it was open source. I think this is an area with a lot of nuance, and absolute statements are hard to make.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Yes. Open source, but secret/classified (as necessary, IRS software should be open-source, period). This way the software will be a useful learning/historical resource when it's declassified in the future.
  - vanderZwan 8y ago
    Also, electronic voting. Not that electronic voting booths will ever be a good idea, but forcing them to open source their stuff will hopefully deter people from even trying (and if not it will make it even more blatantly visible that these things are terrible). It's just like the biggest argument for open source in science: it is required for proper accountability.
    - ganoushoreilly 8y ago
      Most of the code in electronic voting is owned by the vendors though so by the same standard would we have to open source any 3rd party software the govt aquires?
      - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        I think it would have to be a requirement of any money the government spends on code. Otherwise, they will easily defeat the requirement to make it public by passing it through a private company.
Proven 8y ago
> The site points out some compelling reasons why any government code produced with public money should be free software. Yeah, but what compelling reasons are there for the government to write any software at all? Another way to solve the problem - eliminate government spending. I'd rather have my money back than reference government-developed source code.
tombert 8y ago
It would certainly be interesting to make a pull request for something like Healthcare.gov or something. I wonder if it's measurable how much tax money we could save (if any) if we allowed the public to audit and improve our code.
- mulmen 8y ago
  Providing the source does not mean giving the public commit access.
  - kerkeslager 8y ago
    Neither does auditing and improving...
  - tombert 8y ago
    I'm not saying it inherently does, I just thought it would be interesting.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Having government acquired code be open source licensed from the vendor to the government doesn't even mean the government publicly discloses the code. It does mean the government is free to do so, or to hire another vendor to work on it without restriction.
    - tombert 8y ago
      Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released if it's not confidential? I'm seriously asking; I'm not an expert in these things.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released? FOIA has a number of things exceptions, material subject to it's exceptions is not required to be released, including: ---[quote]--- Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security. Exemption 2: Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency. Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law. Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged. Exemption 5: Privileged communications within or between agencies, including those protected by the: 1. Deliberative Process Privilege (provided the records were created less than 25 years before the date on which they were requested) 2. Attorney-Work Product Privilege 3. Attorney-Client Privilege Exemption 6: Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual's personal privacy. Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that: 7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings 7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication 7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy 7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law 7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual Exemption 8: Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions. Exemption 9: Geological information on wells. ---[quote from: https://www.foia.gov/faq.html https://www.foia.gov/faq.html ]--- The sensitive things at issue probably fall into the existing exemptions (a lot in #3), otherwise business rules could be disclosed under FOIA now, even if the code wasn't the government’s to disclose.
bovermyer 8y ago
The positive and optimistic side of this is well-documented. The darker side is that making all publicly-funded software public would also mean making all weapons software public. That could have disastrous consequences.
- dpwm 8y ago
  You can have information that is public domain but still secret. Open source falls under copyright; secrecy falls under whatever national security laws are in place. The UK government's cabinet papers fall under this: they won't be released for thirty years, but they will be released under the Open Government License. I'm not sure that this is what the article is advocating, though.
- moosey 8y ago
  Perhaps we could just stop making weapons software? I mean, someone needs to go first. When I look at wars throughout the world, a huge number of them are fought with US weapons, and we don't actually have a good track record of supporting peaceful people. I don't think that we'll get there until we stop dumping weapons on the world for profit.
  - arcaster 8y ago
    Of course this would be great, we'd all like this to happen. But your perspective is dangerously shallow and juvenile, the real world just straight up doesn't work this way. If you believe in this enough, you're better off leaving the U.S. IMHO. If you disagree, I recommend visiting a country on the verge of complete collapse. Do that, then think about how good we have it, think about how many people want to take that way of life away at all costs. Part of being an adult is striking a balance between your ideals, a comfortable life and letting one or the other take over.
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - moosey 8y ago
rb808 8y ago
The other point that there are millions of boring crud apps written out there in govt/contractor land. We dont need to see these as open source, its not as if there are lots of devs that love fixing crappy crud apps in their spare time.
- c22 8y ago
  Your argument against is that we might get bored reading the open source code?
  - YetAnotherNick 8y ago
    While it is bad way to put it, but GP comments does make a little sense. All I can think of government software is CRUD apps or research projects. The source of later is released on case by case basis(tor, selinux on one hand, exploits such as stuxnet on the other) and any ruling won't help much there.
    - c22 8y ago
      But why shouldn't CRUD apps be open sourced? Is the assertion that they stand to reap no benefit because no one will contribute to them? I don't think I agree with this position. Nor do I feel that contributions are the only forseeable benefit of open source software.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  Sure there are. Plenty of folks are looking for easy fixes to make to software, or are trying to learn to code. When I was in college, I looked for little projects like this all the time that had approachable, easy to grok bugs. I love being a gardener, cleaning up cruft, tackling todos, working through various bug lists, and generally tidying up a codebase. Simple CRUD apps are full of this stuff. And I'm sure I'm not alone in looking for easy ways to participate and feel a little more connected.
uberman 8y ago
Would this not imply that if "my" government funded some software that "your" government would be free to take it? I'm not sure I'm keen on subsidizing "your" government all that much. What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the people of/under "my" government?
- mulmen 8y ago
  Is it your position that utilizing open source software is freeloading?
  - uberman 8y ago
    I contribute, I utilize and I appreciate open source and the community of dedicated contributors. Open source software is great and "YES" frankly the vast vast majoring of those involved in the use of open source software are freeloaders. We (yes I include myself) typically sow way less than we reap. This argument though is not about the merits of open source software but about the use of public funds. "If my taxes helped pay for software, should result necessarily be public source code." My opinion is absolutely not. If my taxes as a citizen of country "A" paid for the development of some piece of software then I do not have the slightest reservation that the citizens of country "B" have no kind of moral, ethical, or legal right to it. If the tax payers, government representatives, and authors agree and choose to release their results and products under some open source agreement then that is up to them.
    - c22 8y ago
      On the other hand if my taxes went to pay for something I should get to know what it is, shouldn't I? If our elected representatives paid 500 million of our tax dollars for some piece of software shouldn't we be able to audit it and see if that was money well spent? If we can't do this, how will we know which representatives to vote for again?
      - uberman 8y ago
        This is a complete red herring. Within reason you can see where your money went. This is what a FOIA request is for.
stupeo 8y ago
This make sense for some public sources, obviously not all (such as defense). As it happens, this is exactly what we do at http://interneuron.org http://interneuron.org for Healthcare software. Most of our revenue so far has been NHS organisations. We are also a CIC - so a not for profit.
kerkeslager 8y ago
Most posts on this thread are focusing on exceptional cases where there are obvious reasons not to open the source, such as defense, but huge amounts of publicly-funded code is locked up for no reason whatsoever. Let's discuss some use cases that make more sense: 1. healthcare.gov 2. Stoplights/traffic control cameras. 3. Voting machines. 4. Electrical grid. 5. IRS.
- zbruhnke 8y ago
  Man it would be pretty amazing to be able to submit a Pull Request to the IRS. Matt Cutts if you're reading this please help! On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening as a result of that
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - dragontamer 8y ago
    > On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening as a result of that Any more nefarious things that can be done with your Linux OS server talking to your Open Source Chromium / Firefox web browser? Open Source doesn't necessarily mean less secure.
    - zbruhnke 8y ago
      Agreed that it does not necessarily mean less secure ... see my comment below
    - keithnz 8y ago
      I'm not sure these things are equivalent, many people use a browser and Linux, not many people need to use electrical grid software. However, I would imagine it would still be beneficial for open analysis though. I'm not sure security through obscurity is a good option when there are motivated nefarious actors involved. But that's more of a "gut feel" than based on any evidence
arcaster 8y ago
I'm completely okay with power grid and IRS code not being public. I don't trust it to be built or maintained properly, which also means I'm relatively sure it'd be open season for troves of people who want to do bad things. Open Source is great - but sometimes it makes absolutely no sense.
kemitchell 8y ago
If software is publicly funded, it should go into the public domain.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Where do you draw the line between publicly funded and publicly licensed?
CaliforniaKarl 8y ago
Alot of the conversation I have seen so far has been US-centric. That's fair, given that this was posted during US business hours, but for the US I don't really think this discussion applies as much. Works created by the United States Government are not covered by copyright in the US, effectively making them public domain _in the US_. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 "But—", you say, "—the code the NSA is publishing has a license attached!" Indeed, that confused me too, until I found the answer at https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#_Toc505089933 https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm...: >…copyright exclusion for works of the U.S. Government is not intended to have any impact on protection of these works abroad (S. REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 56 (1976)). Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in other countries depending on the treatment of government works by the national copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is sometimes asserted by U.S. Government agencies outside the United States. So, Public Domain within the US, and Copywritten (but OSS-licensed) outside of the US. My understanding is that copyright in EU countries is much more complicated. For example, apparently the view of the Eiffel Tower at night is copyrighted. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM As for anything Classified in the US, there are laws controlling distribution. So, take something GPL-licensed: If you take, use, and modify the software, you are not required to provide the code unless you distribute the product to others. See the question "Since U.S. Government works are not protected by copyright in the U.S., are all U.S. Government works publicly available without restriction in the U.S.?" from https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#315 https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm... (it's pretty long, and has a _lot_ of references, so I'm not reproducing it here) Of course, you may argue that, if a hacking tool is pushed to a remote system, and that hacking tool was made using GPL-licensed code, then the source should be distributed with the hacking tool. Also, note I said GPL, _not_ AGPL. For both of those cases, I don't know if the laws governing Classified material trump those governing Copyright (I'd bet they do), and what International law has to say.
- thayne 8y ago
  But what about software that is funded by the government, but not directly created by government agencies, such as software that is the result of government research grants (at universities or private research institutions) or contracts with private companies? And does that law also apply to works created by state and municipal governments?
jamessantiago 8y ago
At the very least publically funded code should be open between government departments. There seems to be a lot of internally developed work that is unnecessarily replicated or lost just due to having no obligation or available resources to share or collaborate. Maybe there needs to be some system in place to have some sort of internal NDA or need to know check, but this seems like a good first step.
- staplers 8y ago
  You're assuming government code even uses proper documentation or version control..
  - jamessantiago 8y ago
    I'm assuming they don't. I guess to clarify, I'm desiring that the government not only mandates that they do use documentation and source control, but that they commit such code to a repository accessible by other departments. A minimal readme and "init" push may do the trick, but I'd want my local counsel to at least be able to pull the code for something like the government's favorite public website implementation and reuse it at lower cost than redoing it.
  - vharuck 8y ago
    It's easier to justify these practices when they have the real payout of reducing duplication.
jamieweb 8y ago
The NHS (National Health Service) in the UK open-sourced their website frontend library[1] to allow all of the different hospitals, doctors practises and clinics to create their websites in-line with a centralised brand/accessibility standard. [1] https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend
ashelmire 8y ago
Same for healthcare, engineering tech, pharmaceuticals, etc.
newnewpdro 8y ago
I'm in favor of the transparency this would confer, but it's probably not in our best national interests to be potentially giving away state of the art software for running large governments. The code is of minimal utility to individual citizens who have no need to run large governments, but can be hugely beneficial to our competing nations.
- c22 8y ago
  Psst, it's not our state of the art software that's holding this ball of mud together.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    It's a competition nonetheless.
    - c22 8y ago
      Is it? What would it look like to win this competition? To lose?
dhcrain 8y ago
I work on Medicare software for a state that is funded by CMS[1] and it is freely available to any other state that also is funded by CMS. This has happened, we handed over the code base to another state and they are implementing it. [1]https://www.cms.gov/ https://www.cms.gov/
GlenTheMachine 8y ago
Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by ITAR regulations. Barring any of those cases, you should be able to get a copy by filing a FOIA request. The problem with FOIA requests is that you have to know specifically what to request, usually by name. Obviously, it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what software you are requesting. The bigger problem, though, is that much of the US government just isn't technically set up to release software (as opposed to documents). Setting up a git repository, in the DoD, is an utter nightmare. Every single patch has to be pushed through a public release process that can take weeks or months and involves review by as many as ten to fifteen different offices, few if any of which even know anything about software. If you're setting up your own server, getting the server itself approved and provisioned can be an exercise in bureaucratic frustration, and can take literally years to accomplish. Those of us writing software very often want it to get out there. But the structure of the organization makes that excruciatingly difficult.
- ar_lan 8y ago
  I used to work in a state government job as a student intern, and they said they wanted an internal directory for some various tasks. You can think of it like an inventory manager sort of website, purely on our intranet. The mad lad my lead was, said we would need a database for retaining some of the basic data we needed to keep track of. Nothing all that special, just a few tables, and by nature nothing sensitive would be tracked. This got rejected immediately, and our IT literally cited "no database installations are allowed per security team." Needless to say 4 months later, after some back and forth, he eventually said "whatever, we'll just store everything to files then" and that's how he came up with the world's slowest inventory manager - I suspect just the way they like it.
  - mountainofdeath 8y ago
    Shh... Don't tell them that stuff like SQLite _is_ a flat-file database.
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mensetmanusman 8y ago
Consider the Feds tried doing this with IP post WW2 and the results were disasterous. Turns out govt. employees aren’t allowed to be paid enough to make 100 hour work weeks reasonble - the level of effort required to get some ideas off the ground. Once the Bayh-dole act was passed to allow citizens to take ownership of IP related to publicly funded endeavors, only then did the public start benefiting.
- saltcured 8y ago
  I came here and searched for the Bayh-Dole Act and am surprised to find only this single mention of it. It really does seem to me to be at the root of the current policies around federally funded research artifacts. I disagree with the causation you infer regarding public benefits as a result of this change in IP rules. After all, we saw many post WW2 benefits of federal spending long before 1980. The most visible were in aerospace developments that gave us the jet age, but of course even Silicon Valley was well on its way in the 1970s with lots of computer industry groundwork already in place. I think a lot of the computer industry developments of the 1980-1990s were almost inevitable once that stage was set. It was mostly a coincidence that Bayh-Dole was passed and universities ramped up their strip-mining of the federal budget around the same period. An awful lot of the current Internet age was built by people like me, working on open source projects and federal funding in spite of Bayh-Dole, not because of it.
fghtr 8y ago
It should also concern scientific software. Right now many research groups close their software written using the tax-payers money. Some even try to sell it.
atoav 8y ago
The combat slogan for this is: public money, public code!
unreal37 8y ago
An unpopular opinion I guess, but the article is saying if you receive government funding, it should be open source. That's more than just government employees making code. It's also any company, individual or agency that even accepts $1 of public grant money or any external contracts. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of coders who's daily job is partially funded by the government having to push their code public. I worked for an ad agency for a time that created websites and sent emails for tourism. The tourism website needs to be open source? The program that sends out discount coupons to public attractions and parks? Each HTML email I code needs to be submitted to repository somewhere? I don't think people realize just how many millions of lines of code per day we're talking about here. Most of them being inconsequential things. 99.999999% of that being noise. You've just jacked up the cost of working with the government. More time spent coding. More documentation for things that shouldn't need it. More time spent with compliance issues. Companies need to charge more. More tax dollars wasted.
- dwheeler 8y ago
  No, you just reduced the costs of everything. ONLY the code the government paid for development is being discussed. If 1% of the development was paid for by direction of the government, then at most we're talking 1%. The bigger problem today is that the government re-builds things 1000 times.
- coryrc 8y ago
  Yes, you should need to make it open source. There's no reason to have a different backend for every town in the USA; less work for you to do and less money to be spent redundantly.
- basseq 8y ago
  > the article is saying if you receive government funding, it should be open source. Despite the headline, the article actually doesn't state that. It says thing like, "any government code produced with public money", "all software developed for the government", and "any source code written by the government must be released".
kuwze 8y ago
Actually companies throw fits when the government contributes to open-source, especially when it comes to lucrative defense related stuff [0]. [0]: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/ https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/
- sdinsn 8y ago
  That case is not at all related, please read more carefully: > the committee questions whether Accumulo runs afoul of a government policy that prevents federal agencies from building their own software when they have access to commercial alternatives The law exists to prevent wasting time & money, it has nothing to do with being open source.
deleted 8y ago
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dwheeler 8y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned code.gov - see https://code.gov/ https://code.gov/ This is part of the implementation of M-16-21, which said, "Each agency shall release as OSS at least 20 percent of its new custom-developed code each year for the term of the pilot program. (3 years)".
- bluetwo 8y ago
  Hey!!! Look!!! Actual Knowledge!!
jeffalyanak 8y ago
The Government of Canada has some decent policies on that. The Directive on Management of Information Technology stipulates that government agencies must: * Favour open source solutions * Favour non-prorietary solutions * Release source for custom-built solutions under open source licenses through Government of Canada sites See C.2.3.8 for the relevant clauses: https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249 https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249
kesor 8y ago
Shouldn't this include all the code written but publicly traded companies as well? I mean, it is mostly funded by people's pensions - why not open source that!
unicornporn 8y ago
https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/ ∆ Surprised this hasn't been shared yet
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snambi 8y ago
Totally makes sense. Why would tax payers fund a project, which will be used for profit of privileged few?
ausjke 8y ago
Let's look at this from a global view, one country's funded software may not be forced to be shared by other countries unless they paid their dues? As code in the public domain is for the whole earth these days. Yes nations do compete. The whole one-government funded software should be published to internet is _false_, in a technical sense.
amichal 8y ago
An example of open source government. https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-open-source-project https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-open-source-projec... They also funded and encourage the open sourcing of the work we are doing for them https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-warehouse https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-warehouse
xiaodai 8y ago
MS office to Libreoffice will be a disaster. I used excel professionally and tried libre. Omg, nothing worked. Loading large didnt work, doing pivot table didn't work. People need to start using R, libre will be really bad
daveheq 8y ago
Wrong; our military, CIA, and FBI are all funded by public money; should they all be open too? No. There's plenty of software that's publicly funded that should not be open source, and much of that wouldn't make sense anyway as it's proprietary.
basseq 8y ago
The thrust of the article changes from "governments should use open source software" to "governments should open-source their custom software" about 2/3rds of the way through. Contrary to the headline, it never goes as far as to say that any government-funded software should be open-source.[1] The latter precludes the (reasonable) arguments talking about grants and public-private partnerships, of which the intent is to stimulate economic innovation, not produce public code. I think the proposal is reasonable, but it puts a heavy administrative onus on the government to open-source said code, including potential warranting that the code in question is indeed free of any other copyright or license requirement. [1] Emphasis mine: "any government code produced with public money..."
exabrial 8y ago
Would it be possible to FOIA the source code and commit history?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Disclosability and licensing are almost orthogonal (though a proprietary license might make code more likely to be nondisclosable.) Particularly, open source code could still fall into most of the existing FOIA exceptions.
hndamien 8y ago
In addition, publicly funded surveillance cameras in public places should produce publicly available data.
ArtDev 8y ago
The former administration agreed and made efforts in this direction including publishing code on Drupal.org: https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse On a sidenote, apparently the new administration scrapped it for a brochure Wordpress site. Funny discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousegov_is_now_on_wordpress/ https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousego...
MR4D 8y ago
According to this line of reasoning, all the code for our nuclear weapons systems should be open source. Beware the law of unintended consequences - it’ll bite you! (For the record, I agree with the sentiment, but it’s hard to implement without causing undesirable effects.)
bluetwo 8y ago
OK. If you believe this to be true, you need to elect leaders that make this a priority. If it's not an issue, make it one. If no one cares to support the issue, find someone to run on it. If you can't find someone to run on the issue, you've got to run yourself.
- baroffoos 8y ago
  What a useless suggestion. The current political setup does not allow electing people based on issues as granular as this. No politicians will make promises about this because only a small population understands why it is important. Also you know how useless attempting to run yourself is. You will never get anywhere which is good because just having one good idea doesn't make you qualified to lead. The best thing to do is to start public debate among people who understand the issue and attempt to get those in charge to join in.
  - bluetwo 8y ago
    I'm sorry to hear you don't understand how democracy works.
CodeWriter23 8y ago
So avionics software for our latest fighter planes should be open source? Does not sound like a very smart idea from that perspective...
a_w 8y ago
I have always thought that all of the BBC's code should be open source.
austincheney 8y ago
As a government employee and software developer I think this is completely the wrong argument. Before we get that argument we should convince the government to not be afraid of writing software. In all but a few edge cases the government doesn't want employees writing software for a number of unfounded irrational reasons. Many areas of the government, especially the military, are still afraid of using any open source software.
westurner 8y ago
From the US Digital Services Playbook [1]: > PLAY 13 > Default to open > When we collaborate in the open and publish our data publicly, we can improve Government together. By building services more openly and publishing open data, we simplify the public’s access to government services and information, allow the public to contribute easily, and enable reuse by entrepreneurs, nonprofits, other agencies, and the public. > Checklist > - Offer users a mechanism to report bugs and issues, and be responsive to these reports > [...] > - Ensure that we maintain contractual rights to all custom software developed by third parties in a manner that is publishable and reusable at no cost > [...] > - When appropriate, publish source code of projects or components online > [...] > Key Questions > [...] > - If the codebase has not been released under an open source license, explain why. > - What components are made available to the public as open source? > [...] [1] https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13 https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13
known 8y ago
I also propose all end-of-life software should be open sourced
cs02rm0 8y ago
In the UK it seems like a pain to get anything open sourced. AIUI, by default everything is Crown Copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
I have been banging on about this for years - please see http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto It's hard to make headway with the chicken and egg problem - if there was a good OSS system for a government need, the government could be persuaded to use it - but you can't write one without the initial investment which you cannot get because VC won't fund it ...
oriettaxx 8y ago
In Italy it is mandatory, thanks to a great law https://medium.com/team-per-la-trasformazione-digitale/open-source-italian-public-administration-guidelines-software-acquisition-reuse-dba6c733e1b7 https://medium.com/team-per-la-trasformazione-digitale/open-... Unfortunately the law does not include any sanctions if one does not act accordingly :( but it's sure better then nothing
fithisux 8y ago
I am 100% with this logic.
tvararu 8y ago
This is principle 10 in the UK Government design principles. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#make-things-open-it-makes-things-better https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#mak...

1138 points by jrepinc 8y ago

devinjflick 8y ago

Yeah! NSA fork over those hacking tools!

tombert 8y ago
In a bit of fairness to the NSA (never thought I'd say that), they did give us SELinux, which I think was overall a net good.
- precurse 8y ago
  Is it though? In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it since it can cause random issues. i.e. The Percona XtraDB install guide. I find that it's way too complicated of a layer that most people can't/won't learn. Compare this to the OpenBSD pledge and unveil which doesn't get in the way, and there's no way to disable them. If you make something overly complicated, with the ability to disable it all too easily, then it won't get used.
  - bubblethink 8y ago
    >In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it That is generally bad advice then. selinux is used by Android and Fedora (and hence RHEL & CentOS). selinux can break things, but it is quite stable these days at least for the distro supported packages. The downside is that anything outside the distro packages will likely have no support or will run unconfined. OpenBSD unveil is still new and will face similar challenges in that it will cover the base system well, but for ports, it will be up to the port maintainer to implement it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
saagarjha 8y ago
As an aside, NSA is releasing GHIDRA next month: https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us19/agenda/sessions/16608-Come-Get-Your-Free-NSA-Reverse-Engineering-Tool https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us19/agenda/sessions/16...
baroffoos 8y ago
NSA hacking tools do regularly become public. Just not intentionally.

maerF0x0 8y ago

Also of concern is a tragedy of commons like issue where those who contributed no funding are able to get the software for free. For example if a piece of city focused software is FOSS and then a bunch of other cities choose to consume it but not contribute to the funding or code.

maxvu 8y ago
I think that's a poor application of tragedy of the commons. Also, in your example, I don't know how other cities' use would impede the funding city's use.
- MiddleEndian 8y ago
  In theory you might get a situation where several cities try to wait each other out for similar tasks, hoping another city will buckle first and fund it.
- x0x0 8y ago
  I worked on image analysis software in a wetlab for a particular type of microscopy. They are in just this position: the lab builds and sells software. The fees are low -- on the order of $10-$15k/license. They use the proceeds entirely to fund ongoing development of the software. And the simple fact is, without these license sales, they don't have the resources to fund development. The software is open source in the sense that the licensees are given the source. If the lab has to give the software away, all development ends, unless you have $300k/year of grants sitting around.
  - Nullabillity 8y ago
    This is the same bullshit excuse people use to justify subscription licensing. If they can't get the interested labs to contribute towards the development without the coercion of a commercial license then it sounds like it's either done, or the development roadmap is misaligned with the users' goals. In either case, stopping the abusive current practices would be an immediate improvement for everyone involved.
8y ago

ecshafer 8y ago

I am an open source advocate, but I don't really agree here. Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Here are some cases where closed source software, with some security by obscurity could be helpful. Another example would be some software around designing nuclear systems. But as an example maybe a software funded by the national weather service to run simulations, that aught to be open source (perhaps something like that exists and is open source, that's not my area). But a counter argument to mine could be that some software that is security focused might be more secure if it was open source. I think this is an area with a lot of nuance, and absolute statements are hard to make.

AlexandrB 8y ago
> Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Yes. Open source, but secret/classified (as necessary, IRS software should be open-source, period). This way the software will be a useful learning/historical resource when it's declassified in the future.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Also, electronic voting. Not that electronic voting booths will ever be a good idea, but forcing them to open source their stuff will hopefully deter people from even trying (and if not it will make it even more blatantly visible that these things are terrible). It's just like the biggest argument for open source in science: it is required for proper accountability.
  - ganoushoreilly 8y ago
    Most of the code in electronic voting is owned by the vendors though so by the same standard would we have to open source any 3rd party software the govt aquires?
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      I think it would have to be a requirement of any money the government spends on code. Otherwise, they will easily defeat the requirement to make it public by passing it through a private company.

Proven 8y ago

> The site points out some compelling reasons why any government code produced with public money should be free software. Yeah, but what compelling reasons are there for the government to write any software at all? Another way to solve the problem - eliminate government spending. I'd rather have my money back than reference government-developed source code.

tombert 8y ago

It would certainly be interesting to make a pull request for something like Healthcare.gov or something. I wonder if it's measurable how much tax money we could save (if any) if we allowed the public to audit and improve our code.

mulmen 8y ago
Providing the source does not mean giving the public commit access.
- kerkeslager 8y ago
  Neither does auditing and improving...
- tombert 8y ago
  I'm not saying it inherently does, I just thought it would be interesting.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Having government acquired code be open source licensed from the vendor to the government doesn't even mean the government publicly discloses the code. It does mean the government is free to do so, or to hire another vendor to work on it without restriction.
  - tombert 8y ago
    Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released if it's not confidential? I'm seriously asking; I'm not an expert in these things.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released? FOIA has a number of things exceptions, material subject to it's exceptions is not required to be released, including: ---[quote]--- Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security. Exemption 2: Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency. Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law. Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged. Exemption 5: Privileged communications within or between agencies, including those protected by the: 1. Deliberative Process Privilege (provided the records were created less than 25 years before the date on which they were requested) 2. Attorney-Work Product Privilege 3. Attorney-Client Privilege Exemption 6: Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual's personal privacy. Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that: 7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings 7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication 7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy 7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law 7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual Exemption 8: Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions. Exemption 9: Geological information on wells. ---[quote from: https://www.foia.gov/faq.html https://www.foia.gov/faq.html ]--- The sensitive things at issue probably fall into the existing exemptions (a lot in #3), otherwise business rules could be disclosed under FOIA now, even if the code wasn't the government’s to disclose.

bovermyer 8y ago

The positive and optimistic side of this is well-documented. The darker side is that making all publicly-funded software public would also mean making all weapons software public. That could have disastrous consequences.

dpwm 8y ago
You can have information that is public domain but still secret. Open source falls under copyright; secrecy falls under whatever national security laws are in place. The UK government's cabinet papers fall under this: they won't be released for thirty years, but they will be released under the Open Government License. I'm not sure that this is what the article is advocating, though.
moosey 8y ago
Perhaps we could just stop making weapons software? I mean, someone needs to go first. When I look at wars throughout the world, a huge number of them are fought with US weapons, and we don't actually have a good track record of supporting peaceful people. I don't think that we'll get there until we stop dumping weapons on the world for profit.
- arcaster 8y ago
  Of course this would be great, we'd all like this to happen. But your perspective is dangerously shallow and juvenile, the real world just straight up doesn't work this way. If you believe in this enough, you're better off leaving the U.S. IMHO. If you disagree, I recommend visiting a country on the verge of complete collapse. Do that, then think about how good we have it, think about how many people want to take that way of life away at all costs. Part of being an adult is striking a balance between your ideals, a comfortable life and letting one or the other take over.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - moosey 8y ago

rb808 8y ago

The other point that there are millions of boring crud apps written out there in govt/contractor land. We dont need to see these as open source, its not as if there are lots of devs that love fixing crappy crud apps in their spare time.

c22 8y ago
Your argument against is that we might get bored reading the open source code?
- YetAnotherNick 8y ago
  While it is bad way to put it, but GP comments does make a little sense. All I can think of government software is CRUD apps or research projects. The source of later is released on case by case basis(tor, selinux on one hand, exploits such as stuxnet on the other) and any ruling won't help much there.
  - c22 8y ago
    But why shouldn't CRUD apps be open sourced? Is the assertion that they stand to reap no benefit because no one will contribute to them? I don't think I agree with this position. Nor do I feel that contributions are the only forseeable benefit of open source software.
Pfhreak 8y ago
Sure there are. Plenty of folks are looking for easy fixes to make to software, or are trying to learn to code. When I was in college, I looked for little projects like this all the time that had approachable, easy to grok bugs. I love being a gardener, cleaning up cruft, tackling todos, working through various bug lists, and generally tidying up a codebase. Simple CRUD apps are full of this stuff. And I'm sure I'm not alone in looking for easy ways to participate and feel a little more connected.

uberman 8y ago

Would this not imply that if "my" government funded some software that "your" government would be free to take it? I'm not sure I'm keen on subsidizing "your" government all that much. What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the people of/under "my" government?

mulmen 8y ago
Is it your position that utilizing open source software is freeloading?
- uberman 8y ago
  I contribute, I utilize and I appreciate open source and the community of dedicated contributors. Open source software is great and "YES" frankly the vast vast majoring of those involved in the use of open source software are freeloaders. We (yes I include myself) typically sow way less than we reap. This argument though is not about the merits of open source software but about the use of public funds. "If my taxes helped pay for software, should result necessarily be public source code." My opinion is absolutely not. If my taxes as a citizen of country "A" paid for the development of some piece of software then I do not have the slightest reservation that the citizens of country "B" have no kind of moral, ethical, or legal right to it. If the tax payers, government representatives, and authors agree and choose to release their results and products under some open source agreement then that is up to them.
  - c22 8y ago
    On the other hand if my taxes went to pay for something I should get to know what it is, shouldn't I? If our elected representatives paid 500 million of our tax dollars for some piece of software shouldn't we be able to audit it and see if that was money well spent? If we can't do this, how will we know which representatives to vote for again?
    - uberman 8y ago
      This is a complete red herring. Within reason you can see where your money went. This is what a FOIA request is for.

stupeo 8y ago

This make sense for some public sources, obviously not all (such as defense). As it happens, this is exactly what we do at http://interneuron.org http://interneuron.org for Healthcare software. Most of our revenue so far has been NHS organisations. We are also a CIC - so a not for profit.

kerkeslager 8y ago

Most posts on this thread are focusing on exceptional cases where there are obvious reasons not to open the source, such as defense, but huge amounts of publicly-funded code is locked up for no reason whatsoever. Let's discuss some use cases that make more sense: 1. healthcare.gov 2. Stoplights/traffic control cameras. 3. Voting machines. 4. Electrical grid. 5. IRS.

zbruhnke 8y ago
Man it would be pretty amazing to be able to submit a Pull Request to the IRS. Matt Cutts if you're reading this please help! On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening as a result of that
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening as a result of that Any more nefarious things that can be done with your Linux OS server talking to your Open Source Chromium / Firefox web browser? Open Source doesn't necessarily mean less secure.
  - zbruhnke 8y ago
    Agreed that it does not necessarily mean less secure ... see my comment below
  - keithnz 8y ago
    I'm not sure these things are equivalent, many people use a browser and Linux, not many people need to use electrical grid software. However, I would imagine it would still be beneficial for open analysis though. I'm not sure security through obscurity is a good option when there are motivated nefarious actors involved. But that's more of a "gut feel" than based on any evidence

arcaster 8y ago

I'm completely okay with power grid and IRS code not being public. I don't trust it to be built or maintained properly, which also means I'm relatively sure it'd be open season for troves of people who want to do bad things. Open Source is great - but sometimes it makes absolutely no sense.

kemitchell 8y ago

If software is publicly funded, it should go into the public domain.

tracker1 8y ago
Where do you draw the line between publicly funded and publicly licensed?

CaliforniaKarl 8y ago

Alot of the conversation I have seen so far has been US-centric. That's fair, given that this was posted during US business hours, but for the US I don't really think this discussion applies as much. Works created by the United States Government are not covered by copyright in the US, effectively making them public domain _in the US_. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105 "But—", you say, "—the code the NSA is publishing has a license attached!" Indeed, that confused me too, until I found the answer at https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#_Toc505089933 https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm...: >…copyright exclusion for works of the U.S. Government is not intended to have any impact on protection of these works abroad (S. REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 56 (1976)). Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in other countries depending on the treatment of government works by the national copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is sometimes asserted by U.S. Government agencies outside the United States. So, Public Domain within the US, and Copywritten (but OSS-licensed) outside of the US. My understanding is that copyright in EU countries is much more complicated. For example, apparently the view of the Eiffel Tower at night is copyrighted. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM As for anything Classified in the US, there are laws controlling distribution. So, take something GPL-licensed: If you take, use, and modify the software, you are not required to provide the code unless you distribute the product to others. See the question "Since U.S. Government works are not protected by copyright in the U.S., are all U.S. Government works publicly available without restriction in the U.S.?" from https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#315 https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm... (it's pretty long, and has a _lot_ of references, so I'm not reproducing it here) Of course, you may argue that, if a hacking tool is pushed to a remote system, and that hacking tool was made using GPL-licensed code, then the source should be distributed with the hacking tool. Also, note I said GPL, _not_ AGPL. For both of those cases, I don't know if the laws governing Classified material trump those governing Copyright (I'd bet they do), and what International law has to say.

thayne 8y ago
But what about software that is funded by the government, but not directly created by government agencies, such as software that is the result of government research grants (at universities or private research institutions) or contracts with private companies? And does that law also apply to works created by state and municipal governments?

jamessantiago 8y ago

At the very least publically funded code should be open between government departments. There seems to be a lot of internally developed work that is unnecessarily replicated or lost just due to having no obligation or available resources to share or collaborate. Maybe there needs to be some system in place to have some sort of internal NDA or need to know check, but this seems like a good first step.

staplers 8y ago
You're assuming government code even uses proper documentation or version control..
- jamessantiago 8y ago
  I'm assuming they don't. I guess to clarify, I'm desiring that the government not only mandates that they do use documentation and source control, but that they commit such code to a repository accessible by other departments. A minimal readme and "init" push may do the trick, but I'd want my local counsel to at least be able to pull the code for something like the government's favorite public website implementation and reuse it at lower cost than redoing it.
- vharuck 8y ago
  It's easier to justify these practices when they have the real payout of reducing duplication.

jamieweb 8y ago

The NHS (National Health Service) in the UK open-sourced their website frontend library[1] to allow all of the different hospitals, doctors practises and clinics to create their websites in-line with a centralised brand/accessibility standard. [1] https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend

ashelmire 8y ago

Same for healthcare, engineering tech, pharmaceuticals, etc.

newnewpdro 8y ago

I'm in favor of the transparency this would confer, but it's probably not in our best national interests to be potentially giving away state of the art software for running large governments. The code is of minimal utility to individual citizens who have no need to run large governments, but can be hugely beneficial to our competing nations.

c22 8y ago
Psst, it's not our state of the art software that's holding this ball of mud together.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  It's a competition nonetheless.
  - c22 8y ago
    Is it? What would it look like to win this competition? To lose?

dhcrain 8y ago

I work on Medicare software for a state that is funded by CMS[1] and it is freely available to any other state that also is funded by CMS. This has happened, we handed over the code base to another state and they are implementing it. [1]https://www.cms.gov/ https://www.cms.gov/

GlenTheMachine 8y ago

Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by ITAR regulations. Barring any of those cases, you should be able to get a copy by filing a FOIA request. The problem with FOIA requests is that you have to know specifically what to request, usually by name. Obviously, it can be hard to put your finger on exactly what software you are requesting. The bigger problem, though, is that much of the US government just isn't technically set up to release software (as opposed to documents). Setting up a git repository, in the DoD, is an utter nightmare. Every single patch has to be pushed through a public release process that can take weeks or months and involves review by as many as ten to fifteen different offices, few if any of which even know anything about software. If you're setting up your own server, getting the server itself approved and provisioned can be an exercise in bureaucratic frustration, and can take literally years to accomplish. Those of us writing software very often want it to get out there. But the structure of the organization makes that excruciatingly difficult.

ar_lan 8y ago
I used to work in a state government job as a student intern, and they said they wanted an internal directory for some various tasks. You can think of it like an inventory manager sort of website, purely on our intranet. The mad lad my lead was, said we would need a database for retaining some of the basic data we needed to keep track of. Nothing all that special, just a few tables, and by nature nothing sensitive would be tracked. This got rejected immediately, and our IT literally cited "no database installations are allowed per security team." Needless to say 4 months later, after some back and forth, he eventually said "whatever, we'll just store everything to files then" and that's how he came up with the world's slowest inventory manager - I suspect just the way they like it.
- mountainofdeath 8y ago
  Shh... Don't tell them that stuff like SQLite _is_ a flat-file database.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mensetmanusman 8y ago

Consider the Feds tried doing this with IP post WW2 and the results were disasterous. Turns out govt. employees aren’t allowed to be paid enough to make 100 hour work weeks reasonble - the level of effort required to get some ideas off the ground. Once the Bayh-dole act was passed to allow citizens to take ownership of IP related to publicly funded endeavors, only then did the public start benefiting.

saltcured 8y ago
I came here and searched for the Bayh-Dole Act and am surprised to find only this single mention of it. It really does seem to me to be at the root of the current policies around federally funded research artifacts. I disagree with the causation you infer regarding public benefits as a result of this change in IP rules. After all, we saw many post WW2 benefits of federal spending long before 1980. The most visible were in aerospace developments that gave us the jet age, but of course even Silicon Valley was well on its way in the 1970s with lots of computer industry groundwork already in place. I think a lot of the computer industry developments of the 1980-1990s were almost inevitable once that stage was set. It was mostly a coincidence that Bayh-Dole was passed and universities ramped up their strip-mining of the federal budget around the same period. An awful lot of the current Internet age was built by people like me, working on open source projects and federal funding in spite of Bayh-Dole, not because of it.

fghtr 8y ago

It should also concern scientific software. Right now many research groups close their software written using the tax-payers money. Some even try to sell it.

atoav 8y ago

The combat slogan for this is: public money, public code!

unreal37 8y ago

An unpopular opinion I guess, but the article is saying if you receive government funding, it should be open source. That's more than just government employees making code. It's also any company, individual or agency that even accepts $1 of public grant money or any external contracts. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of coders who's daily job is partially funded by the government having to push their code public. I worked for an ad agency for a time that created websites and sent emails for tourism. The tourism website needs to be open source? The program that sends out discount coupons to public attractions and parks? Each HTML email I code needs to be submitted to repository somewhere? I don't think people realize just how many millions of lines of code per day we're talking about here. Most of them being inconsequential things. 99.999999% of that being noise. You've just jacked up the cost of working with the government. More time spent coding. More documentation for things that shouldn't need it. More time spent with compliance issues. Companies need to charge more. More tax dollars wasted.

dwheeler 8y ago
No, you just reduced the costs of everything. ONLY the code the government paid for development is being discussed. If 1% of the development was paid for by direction of the government, then at most we're talking 1%. The bigger problem today is that the government re-builds things 1000 times.
coryrc 8y ago
Yes, you should need to make it open source. There's no reason to have a different backend for every town in the USA; less work for you to do and less money to be spent redundantly.
basseq 8y ago
> the article is saying if you receive government funding, it should be open source. Despite the headline, the article actually doesn't state that. It says thing like, "any government code produced with public money", "all software developed for the government", and "any source code written by the government must be released".

kuwze 8y ago

Actually companies throw fits when the government contributes to open-source, especially when it comes to lucrative defense related stuff [0]. [0]: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/ https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/

sdinsn 8y ago
That case is not at all related, please read more carefully: > the committee questions whether Accumulo runs afoul of a government policy that prevents federal agencies from building their own software when they have access to commercial alternatives The law exists to prevent wasting time & money, it has nothing to do with being open source.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dwheeler 8y ago

I'm surprised no one has mentioned code.gov - see https://code.gov/ https://code.gov/ This is part of the implementation of M-16-21, which said, "Each agency shall release as OSS at least 20 percent of its new custom-developed code each year for the term of the pilot program. (3 years)".

bluetwo 8y ago
Hey!!! Look!!! Actual Knowledge!!

jeffalyanak 8y ago

The Government of Canada has some decent policies on that. The Directive on Management of Information Technology stipulates that government agencies must: * Favour open source solutions * Favour non-prorietary solutions * Release source for custom-built solutions under open source licenses through Government of Canada sites See C.2.3.8 for the relevant clauses: https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249 https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249

kesor 8y ago

Shouldn't this include all the code written but publicly traded companies as well? I mean, it is mostly funded by people's pensions - why not open source that!

unicornporn 8y ago

https://publiccode.eu/ https://publiccode.eu/ ∆ Surprised this hasn't been shared yet

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

snambi 8y ago

Totally makes sense. Why would tax payers fund a project, which will be used for profit of privileged few?

ausjke 8y ago

Let's look at this from a global view, one country's funded software may not be forced to be shared by other countries unless they paid their dues? As code in the public domain is for the whole earth these days. Yes nations do compete. The whole one-government funded software should be published to internet is _false_, in a technical sense.

amichal 8y ago

An example of open source government. https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-open-source-project https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-open-source-projec... They also funded and encourage the open sourcing of the work we are doing for them https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-warehouse https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-warehouse

xiaodai 8y ago

MS office to Libreoffice will be a disaster. I used excel professionally and tried libre. Omg, nothing worked. Loading large didnt work, doing pivot table didn't work. People need to start using R, libre will be really bad

daveheq 8y ago

Wrong; our military, CIA, and FBI are all funded by public money; should they all be open too? No. There's plenty of software that's publicly funded that should not be open source, and much of that wouldn't make sense anyway as it's proprietary.

basseq 8y ago

The thrust of the article changes from "governments should use open source software" to "governments should open-source their custom software" about 2/3rds of the way through. Contrary to the headline, it never goes as far as to say that any government-funded software should be open-source.[1] The latter precludes the (reasonable) arguments talking about grants and public-private partnerships, of which the intent is to stimulate economic innovation, not produce public code. I think the proposal is reasonable, but it puts a heavy administrative onus on the government to open-source said code, including potential warranting that the code in question is indeed free of any other copyright or license requirement. [1] Emphasis mine: "any government code produced with public money..."

exabrial 8y ago

Would it be possible to FOIA the source code and commit history?

dragonwriter 8y ago
Disclosability and licensing are almost orthogonal (though a proprietary license might make code more likely to be nondisclosable.) Particularly, open source code could still fall into most of the existing FOIA exceptions.

hndamien 8y ago

In addition, publicly funded surveillance cameras in public places should produce publicly available data.

ArtDev 8y ago

The former administration agreed and made efforts in this direction including publishing code on Drupal.org: https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse On a sidenote, apparently the new administration scrapped it for a brochure Wordpress site. Funny discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousegov_is_now_on_wordpress/ https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousego...

MR4D 8y ago

According to this line of reasoning, all the code for our nuclear weapons systems should be open source. Beware the law of unintended consequences - it’ll bite you! (For the record, I agree with the sentiment, but it’s hard to implement without causing undesirable effects.)

bluetwo 8y ago

OK. If you believe this to be true, you need to elect leaders that make this a priority. If it's not an issue, make it one. If no one cares to support the issue, find someone to run on it. If you can't find someone to run on the issue, you've got to run yourself.

baroffoos 8y ago
What a useless suggestion. The current political setup does not allow electing people based on issues as granular as this. No politicians will make promises about this because only a small population understands why it is important. Also you know how useless attempting to run yourself is. You will never get anywhere which is good because just having one good idea doesn't make you qualified to lead. The best thing to do is to start public debate among people who understand the issue and attempt to get those in charge to join in.
- bluetwo 8y ago
  I'm sorry to hear you don't understand how democracy works.

CodeWriter23 8y ago

So avionics software for our latest fighter planes should be open source? Does not sound like a very smart idea from that perspective...

a_w 8y ago

I have always thought that all of the BBC's code should be open source.

austincheney 8y ago

As a government employee and software developer I think this is completely the wrong argument. Before we get that argument we should convince the government to not be afraid of writing software. In all but a few edge cases the government doesn't want employees writing software for a number of unfounded irrational reasons. Many areas of the government, especially the military, are still afraid of using any open source software.

westurner 8y ago

From the US Digital Services Playbook [1]: > PLAY 13 > Default to open > When we collaborate in the open and publish our data publicly, we can improve Government together. By building services more openly and publishing open data, we simplify the public’s access to government services and information, allow the public to contribute easily, and enable reuse by entrepreneurs, nonprofits, other agencies, and the public. > Checklist > - Offer users a mechanism to report bugs and issues, and be responsive to these reports > [...] > - Ensure that we maintain contractual rights to all custom software developed by third parties in a manner that is publishable and reusable at no cost > [...] > - When appropriate, publish source code of projects or components online > [...] > Key Questions > [...] > - If the codebase has not been released under an open source license, explain why. > - What components are made available to the public as open source? > [...] [1] https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13 https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13

known 8y ago

I also propose all end-of-life software should be open sourced

cs02rm0 8y ago

In the UK it seems like a pain to get anything open sourced. AIUI, by default everything is Crown Copyright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

I have been banging on about this for years - please see http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto It's hard to make headway with the chicken and egg problem - if there was a good OSS system for a government need, the government could be persuaded to use it - but you can't write one without the initial investment which you cannot get because VC won't fund it ...

oriettaxx 8y ago

In Italy it is mandatory, thanks to a great law https://medium.com/team-per-la-trasformazione-digitale/open-source-italian-public-administration-guidelines-software-acquisition-reuse-dba6c733e1b7 https://medium.com/team-per-la-trasformazione-digitale/open-... Unfortunately the law does not include any sanctions if one does not act accordingly :( but it's sure better then nothing

fithisux 8y ago

I am 100% with this logic.

tvararu 8y ago

This is principle 10 in the UK Government design principles. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#make-things-open-it-makes-things-better https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles#mak...