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The People’s Code

whitehouse.gov

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Re: The People’s Code

#11

Post by ideonexus »

As a developer, I have been so impressed with the Obama Administrations efforts to put everything online. There is a .gov for anything now and I've been watching organization after organization digitize our commons and put them online.

This "Federal Source Code" policy is a great extension of the project-open-data initiative released a few years back:

https://github.com/project-open-data

I found the db-to-api project in this repository incredibly useful for quickly and safely exposing data from one of my applications to clients.

The only failing I see to these many many initiatives is that so few people realize these powerful free resources are out there to be taken advantage of. I hope that changes in the future.

Re: The People’s Code

#13

Post by evonfriedland »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #3

Putting the code out there for other agencies to use is great, but getting them to actually use it will be another battle. Reuse is tantamount to taking away someone's budget, and therefore, status. The occurrence of two different groups implementing very similar things entirely separately happens more often than you'd think. And I'm not convinced they want to talk or work together, because bureaucrat/military office…

Of possible interest, I used the GitHub API a few months back to see what was actually happening with the code government agencies were committing to GitHub (reuse, contribution patterns, licensing, etc). I ended up writing up some of my observations in a post [1] and 18F blog [2].

[1]: https://emanuelfeld.github.io/blog/2016/04/27/government-git...

[2]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/06/16/emanuel-feld-talks-about-his-...

Re: The People’s Code

#14

Post by thewopr »

Full disclosure, I'm in a federal department that has been pushing for more open source for a while.

This is a great move by the White House. While there are a lot of groups that are trying to push for more openness and release of software, it can often be challenging. A lot of federal groups have been taught over the years to be very risk averse, and open software is viewed by them to be risk. Probably one of the most common concerns is, "What happens if someone takes and misuses our software?" In a highly risk-averse federal environment, these can be challenging arguments to fight against.

If you like and support this kind of thing, one big thing you can do is to contribute and supply feedback. We frequently have to go to our superiors and justify what we are doing with regards to open source. We say things like, "this repository had X pull requests from non-federal contributors". Or, "We got Y comments and questions from non-federal users of our projects".

It could be as simple as an email saying "Hey thanks, I found this useful", to a full-on pull request fixing an issue or with a new feature request. The more fodder we have to say "open source increases engagement and creates positive feedback" the more you will see this kind of thing happening.

Re: The People’s Code

#15

Post by emilecantin »

> This is, after all, the People’s code.

I've been thinking this for a long time, and I'm pleasantly surprised that the US government now says this publicly. I hope this point of view becomes more prevalent in the near future.

Re: The People’s Code

#16

Post by wang_li »

thewopr wrote: post #14

Full disclosure, I'm in a federal department that has been pushing for more open source for a while. This is a great move by the White House. While there are a lot of groups that are trying to push for more openness and release of software, it can often be challenging. A lot of federal groups have been taught over the years to be very risk averse, and open software is viewed by them to be risk. Probably one of the mo…

I'm pretty sure that, assuming you're a government employee, any work you create that would normally be covered by copyright as part of your job is public domain. There's no license legally possible.

Re: The People’s Code

#17

Post by snuxoll »

wang_li wrote: post #16
thewopr wrote: post #14

Full disclosure, I'm in a federal department that has been pushing for more open source for a while. This is a great move by the White House. While there are a lot of groups that are trying to push for more openness and release of software, it can often be challenging. A lot of federal groups have been taught over the years to be very risk averse, and open software is viewed by them to be risk. Probably one of the mo…

I'm pretty sure that, assuming you're a government employee, any work you create that would normally be covered by copyright as part of your job is public domain. There's no license legally possible.

Of course, this isn't the case when you are contracted by the government to develop software for them, which is a huge issue in my eyes. I'm not going to say let's ban shrinkwrapped software in the government (as much as I'd like to see everything the government uses be open source), but I think it's reasonable to require any contracted out to be released under on open license to the public, specifically because it ISN'T just off the shelf software.

Re: The People’s Code

#18

Post by thewopr »

wang_li wrote: post #16
thewopr wrote: post #14

Full disclosure, I'm in a federal department that has been pushing for more open source for a while. This is a great move by the White House. While there are a lot of groups that are trying to push for more openness and release of software, it can often be challenging. A lot of federal groups have been taught over the years to be very risk averse, and open software is viewed by them to be risk. Probably one of the mo…

I'm pretty sure that, assuming you're a government employee, any work you create that would normally be covered by copyright as part of your job is public domain. There's no license legally possible.

Yeah, absolutely. We make that argument often. In fact, the software we open-source is technically supposed to be released as public domain (as in, no license applied) and often is if people are doing things right.

But that doesn't mean it has to be hosted and released online. Many agencies work under the "not going to release anything until we get a FOIA request" model. Just because it is public domain doesn't mean it is public.

Re: The People’s Code

#19

Post by Roboprog »

ideonexus wrote: post #11

As a developer, I have been so impressed with the Obama Administrations efforts to put everything online. There is a .gov for anything now and I've been watching organization after organization digitize our commons and put them online. This "Federal Source Code" policy is a great extension of the project-open-data initiative released a few years back: https://github.com/project-open-data I found the db-to-api project…

For me, the data part is at least as important as the code. I work for UC, and we are working on modernizing the interchange of data between Cal. Public Health and the National Institute of Health for vital records (birth, death, health issues around such).

There are a number of open data reference lists (e.g. - health care facilities) that we are going to be able to snapshot from APIs, rather than maintaining them separately.

Re: The People’s Code

#20

Post by notduncansmith »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #7

As helpful as this may be, the real transformative code is often proprietary. As others have mentioned here, not everybody will use every reusable component, whether it be because of ignorance, larger system incompatibility, or simply turf protection. We should look into solutions for intellectual property that are based on an information economy instead of an industrial economy. Personally, I think it would make sen…

Not sure why this comment was downvoted. I feel similarly about IP reform, and would love to see more discussion around how we can reward innovators appropriately for inventing things without artificially limiting the production of those inventions (via patent trolling, royalty fees, or any other mechanism).

If the issue is that inventors want to get compensated for their inventions (to a degree commensurate with their value), but we don't want to limit what the market can produce, then maybe we could imagine an IP-buying group that paid a fair price to inventors and then made the IP available for general use among the financial backers of said group. One could imagine this as a governmental function (distributing purchased IP among taxpayers) or a corporation (s/taxpayers/shareholders), and it appears to me[0] either one could fit within the framework of existing IP law.

[0] I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this is true.

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