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When we do release code, that's more or less how it works. The issue is that, basically 100% of the time, anything being released to the public has to go throu

When we do release code, that's more or less how it works. The issue is that, basically 100% of the time, anything being released to the public has to go through a release process. If you produced it as an employee of one agency (eg the Air Force), but if was paid for by a different agency (eg DARPA), then it also needs to go through a similar release process on the sponsoring agency's side. Typically, this has to happen for every single “release”. In other words, for the original software, again for every subsequent patch, for the documentation, for every correction or update to the documentation, etc. If you want to give a presentation about it your slides need to be released. If you want to write a paper on it that needs to be released as well. Evey time through the release process takes two to six weeks, depending. This works OK if you are releasing documents. Once a document is written, it usually doesn't need hundreds or thousands of updates over it's lifetime. A journal paper gets released once, then it's done. But the same process is what we currently use for software, and software is just a very different thing than a document is. Imagine what would happen to the release cycle of a small OSS project if it took six weeks for github to get around to posting your update, and if github management rejected about half of them for reasons that were mostly inscrutible to you.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
It doesn't strike me as a huge loss to society if source code updates are only released, say, once per year. It's not ideal but it's not terrible either. (Of course, if the updates aren't happening at all because of opaque internal procedures, that's a different story.)
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  What usually happens is that it doesn't get released at all. It isn't worth the effort. I've got tons of code I've written over the years that, if I could just throw it onto github, I would. But since it would take me six weeks of pain, I don't. Some of that code I'm kind of proud of, or was at the time I wrote it, anyway. I wrote an rviz app a decade before ROS took off.
  - lowercased 8y ago
    Would there be some way of just automatically releasing everything in a git repo after X days (30? 60? 90?) unless some action is taken? Commit/push like normal, and some other process pushes to a public repo after X days, but anyone can review and block in the meantime for security reasons when needed?
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      No. “Automatic release” is a contradiction in terms. It could happen, but it would take something like the Secretary of Defense ordering it. Or a White House directive. The folks at my level, or at any level I can actually talk to, don't have the authority. The thing is, they aren't making these policies and procedures up just to be dense. There are real, hard and fast laws and department-wide policies that require the system to look the way it does.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    But if someone files a Freedom of Information requests, that forces the process into motion, right? (If there were more people filing request, I wonder if the internal procedure would be made less painful out of necessity...)
    - anticensor 8y ago
      And you would get your information request rejected due to unreasonable efforts required to satisfy. FOI is meant for information that can legally be published with reasonable effort, but not yet available.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

It doesn't strike me as a huge loss to society if source code updates are only released, say, once per year. It's not ideal but it's not terrible either. (Of course, if the updates aren't happening at all because of opaque internal procedures, that's a different story.)

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
What usually happens is that it doesn't get released at all. It isn't worth the effort. I've got tons of code I've written over the years that, if I could just throw it onto github, I would. But since it would take me six weeks of pain, I don't. Some of that code I'm kind of proud of, or was at the time I wrote it, anyway. I wrote an rviz app a decade before ROS took off.
- lowercased 8y ago
  Would there be some way of just automatically releasing everything in a git repo after X days (30? 60? 90?) unless some action is taken? Commit/push like normal, and some other process pushes to a public repo after X days, but anyone can review and block in the meantime for security reasons when needed?
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    No. “Automatic release” is a contradiction in terms. It could happen, but it would take something like the Secretary of Defense ordering it. Or a White House directive. The folks at my level, or at any level I can actually talk to, don't have the authority. The thing is, they aren't making these policies and procedures up just to be dense. There are real, hard and fast laws and department-wide policies that require the system to look the way it does.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  But if someone files a Freedom of Information requests, that forces the process into motion, right? (If there were more people filing request, I wonder if the internal procedure would be made less painful out of necessity...)
  - anticensor 8y ago
    And you would get your information request rejected due to unreasonable efforts required to satisfy. FOI is meant for information that can legally be published with reasonable effort, but not yet available.