This is excellent as it puts something (sorta in writing). But the government only has a limited ability to retain copyright. If there is a wholly in-house developed program, one _should_ be able to get the source under a FOIA request.
US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
51–60 of 110 posts
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#52It 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…
That looks like PACER still falls under that.
I wonder if this would make it easier to build a replacement whose interface isn't utterly terrible. Of course, the hard part would be convincing the courts to use it. Based on a sample size of one Clerk of Court, who thinks PACER is absolutely fantastic, this will be hard. To be fair, it is state-of-the-art in terms of access to court documents in the US.
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#53Earlier 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…
This is great thinking on this matter, much better than the blunt instrument we're looking at currently.
I still kinda think the blunt instrument is an improvement over the status quo, but it's hard to say.
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure it's wide, but it also seems pretty reasonable to me
My main disappointment is that I'm not sure it will be reasonably applied, as so many things could be interpreted as having national security implications when in reality they're only used with security-sensitive data.
Or alternately, every system that handles private information (which, for a government, is basically all of them) will be considered to be a security risk to open-source even though the dataset will still be private.
"Security through obscurity" will mean that nothing gets opened.
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#55Why is this limited to software? Why not also publish publicly financed: * legal agreements * HR contracts * management presentations, best practices, and training material * marketing presentations and training material * creative output such as artwork and music so that the rest of the world can use them for free..
> creative output such as artwork and music If I'm not mistaken, all intellectual property published by the US government is public domain by law. I may be wrong or you may be referring to something else.
Close. It's not publication by the government that is important. It's authorship.
If a work is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties, then it is not subject to copyright in the US.
It might be subject to copyright in other countries, though.
If the government pays for a work to be created and published, but it is not a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties, then it will be copyrighted and the copyright owner will be whoever it would be normally. If there is an agreement between the author and the government to assign the copyright to the government, the copyright will still be valid, and owned by the government.
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#56Looking forward to https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency/PRISM et al
It's funny you say that because that's the one NSA did voluntarily: http://www.informationweek.com/applications/nsa-submits-open... https://accumulo.apache.org/ ;)
Don't forget https://github.com/simp
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny you say that because that's the one NSA did voluntarily: http://www.informationweek.com/applications/nsa-submits-open... https://accumulo.apache.org/ ;)
Also: https://nifi.apache.org/
Hell yeah! That might be the one I was thinking of. I recall it had labeling or provenance tagging for security purposes. Both might have it, though.
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny you say that because that's the one NSA did voluntarily: http://www.informationweek.com/applications/nsa-submits-open... https://accumulo.apache.org/ ;)
Don't forget https://github.com/simp
Oh yeah, I did forget about that one. Page is kind of clutterer but the glance makes me think this was the tool that automated & checks hardening guides. Am I right?
And does it substitute for system monitoring/config tools that are popular or just complement them?
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#59What percentage of US government software is currently developed as FLOSS?
Re: US government commits to publish publicly financed software under FOSS licenses
#60It 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…
That looks like PACER still falls under that. I wonder if this would make it easier to build a replacement whose interface isn't utterly terrible. Of course, the hard part would be convincing the courts to use it. Based on a sample size of one Clerk of Court, who thinks PACER is absolutely fantastic, this will be hard. To be fair, it is state-of-the-art in terms of access to court documents in the US.
Could you imagine an API-only version of PACER where developers were free to build search, mobile, other front-ends on of it? Sure, that's basically a high school project using a MongoDB or CouchDB back-end. But legal tech is horribly antiquated and govt-legal tech has a long way to go. It seems like the best move would be API-only so that individuals and companies could build services on top.
BTW - check out www.casetext.com for an idea of what private enterprise can do in terms of making public records useful.