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US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

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Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#31

Post by derefr »

jonas21 wrote: post #26
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #5

It seems like they've cut a wide swath for (probably) exempting the most interesting of the software that could have been developed in the open. > Applicable exceptions are as follows: > The release of the item is restricted by another statute or regulation, such as the Export Administration Regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or the laws and regulations governing classified information; > The…

The important thing is that this changes the default. Instead of the default being closed and needing to justify open-sourcing something, the default will be to open-source things and having to justify keeping something closed. That's huge.

It pushes the incentives around as well, though. Unless there's some sort of marginal cost for each line of code they choose to keep proprietary, they'll inevitably do "the least work necessary" when they realize that some project is going to have components fitting these clauses, by by boxing up the entire effort under one of these clauses.

Ideally, with some sort of force opposing propriety, the incentive would be such that the government would think it in its best interests to granularize their code into small libraries, programs, and network services, so that they could open-source as much as possible, leaving tiny "classified kernels" as wrappers for libraries or plugins for apps.

For an idea of such a force: maybe create a "proriety credit" that a government department would to buy for each 1000 lines of code they refuse to release, whose funding goes to this effort to open-source everything else?

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#33

Post by wlievens »

derefr wrote: post #31
jonas21 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing is that this changes the default. Instead of the default being closed and needing to justify open-sourcing something, the default will be to open-source things and having to justify keeping something closed. That's huge.

It pushes the incentives around as well, though. Unless there's some sort of marginal cost for each line of code they choose to keep proprietary, they'll inevitably do "the least work necessary" when they realize that some project is going to have components fitting these clauses, by by boxing up the entire effort under one of these clauses. Ideally, with some sort of force opposing propriety, the incentive would be…

LOC-based metric tied to money... What could go wrong?

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#34

Post by Zigurd »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #5

It seems like they've cut a wide swath for (probably) exempting the most interesting of the software that could have been developed in the open. > Applicable exceptions are as follows: > The release of the item is restricted by another statute or regulation, such as the Export Administration Regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or the laws and regulations governing classified information; > The…

The first two look reasonable, but after that it goes downhill. "The release of the item would create an identifiable risk to the stability, security, or integrity of the agency’s systems or personnel" means "I don't feel like it and you can't make me."

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#35

Post by jMyles »

It is completely contrary to the notion of an open and free society that the government is permitted to spend taxed dollars developing anything meant for domestic use in secret, much less it being (more or less) the default policy.

Looking at the exemptions carved out of this rule (assuming this source is accurate), this looks more like it is codifying the secret nature of government operations than it is opening up anything substantial.

Hard to regard this as good news, although it may be another straw on the back of the government finally falling and the emergence of an actual open and peaceful world.

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#36

Post by stepanhruda »

nxzero wrote: post #30
tajen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you allow a user to confirm this in real time? Hash displayed on th screen?

Yes, that's correct, being able to download the code, hash it, and then compare it to the hash displayed real-time would be a first step towards enabling this.

the software can easily be modified to display the hash you are expecting

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#37

Post by knight17 »

gpm wrote: post #25
grondilu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have a way to ensure the code actually running on voting machines is the code that was published, there is no point.

Yes there is, it significantly raises the bar for maintaining plausible deniability while enabling voting fraud. Right now if there is a bug that creates incorrect vote totals it would be very hard to prove it was done intentionally. If the software was required to be open source, then just the fact that they were running different software than was published would be strong evidence that it was intentional.

The low tech solution tried in India is to have a paper trail on the electronic voting machines itself.

>> ... will be fitted with a printer that will have a drop box to store the paper trail of the votes cast. This is expected to alleviate concerns — expressed earlier by the opposition led by BJP — over possible tampering of EVMs to favour a certain candidate.http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/2019-ge...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/EC-ready-with-new-a...

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#39

Post by [deleted] »

wlievens wrote: post #33
derefr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pushes the incentives around as well, though. Unless there's some sort of marginal cost for each line of code they choose to keep proprietary, they'll inevitably do "the least work necessary" when they realize that some project is going to have components fitting these clauses, by by boxing up the entire effort under one of these clauses. Ideally, with some sort of force opposing propriety, the incentive would be…

LOC-based metric tied to money... What could go wrong?

[deleted]

Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses

#40

Post by revelation »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #5

It seems like they've cut a wide swath for (probably) exempting the most interesting of the software that could have been developed in the open. > Applicable exceptions are as follows: > The release of the item is restricted by another statute or regulation, such as the Export Administration Regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or the laws and regulations governing classified information; > The…

So they commit to nothing at all.
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