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The People's Code

code.gov

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Re: The People's Code

#21

Post by random_rr »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #10
random_rr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% is a LOT! Consider the amount of work it takes to open-source things. It's a huge step forward.

What do you think takes the most effort to make these projects open source? If this were the policy for all new projects, why would that be difficult?

There is a lot of internal resistance to open sourcing code. Lots of people believe that their code is their secret sauce - and why would you have highly paid consultants create code just so the next department can take it?

There's also security concerns to take into account - which I know someone will say is a good thing, because of transparency and so forth. But just realize that it's not a trivial amount of work to clean up a code-base and display it to the public all of the time.

And if the policy were open-source by default, the unspoken policy for project managers would be "automatically submitting a request to be closed source"

It's not perfect, but I know that 20% is a lot, and I think anyone who's worked in the sector would agree.

Re: The People's Code

#23

Post by X86BSD »

random_rr wrote: post #5
kensai wrote: post #3

"The Federal Source Code Policy is designed to support reuse and public access to custom-developed Federal source code. It requires new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or for the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across all Federal agencies. It also includes an Open Source Pilot Program that requires agencies to release at least 20% of new custom-developed Federal s…

20% is a LOT! Consider the amount of work it takes to open-source things. It's a huge step forward.

The amount of work is kind of moot. If it's tax dollars funding its development don't you think it should all be open sourced?

Re: The People's Code

#24

Post by autoreleasepool »

desdiv wrote: post #16
kensai wrote: post #3

"The Federal Source Code Policy is designed to support reuse and public access to custom-developed Federal source code. It requires new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or for the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across all Federal agencies. It also includes an Open Source Pilot Program that requires agencies to release at least 20% of new custom-developed Federal s…

I agree that 20% is too little, considering that works by the federal government are supposed to be in automatic public domain[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_th...

You make a great point. Can anyone explain why software is exempt from this?

Re: The People's Code

#25

Post by colejohnson66 »

random_rr wrote: post #21
joshdotsmith wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think takes the most effort to make these projects open source? If this were the policy for all new projects, why would that be difficult?

There is a lot of internal resistance to open sourcing code. Lots of people believe that their code is their secret sauce - and why would you have highly paid consultants create code just so the next department can take it? There's also security concerns to take into account - which I know someone will say is a good thing, because of transparency and so forth. But just realize that it's not a trivial amount of work t…

But isn't everything made by the government in the public domain?

Re: The People's Code

#27

Post by Forge36 »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #10
random_rr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% is a LOT! Consider the amount of work it takes to open-source things. It's a huge step forward.

What do you think takes the most effort to make these projects open source? If this were the policy for all new projects, why would that be difficult?

New projects with new companies is easy. The problem is open source isn't a requirement for old projects, retroactively adding it is hard.

The companies hired would need to be new companies to contacting, with higher costs. Don't forget, government contracts are a lowest bidder war. Going full open source immediately might expose code that built using proprietary technology from a different division of a company. Therefore open source from scratch will have a high startup cost.

The existing projects can be small, open source, but more importantly these projects begin to build a foundation others can build on. The library of code created to support the framework of these projects will eventually be used as the basis for larger projects.

Wrapping back to the 80% this allows the existing, proprietary code reuse. While new, it's useless without its is proprietary components. This code, if released with proprietary components (and that's a big if since the binary would then be openly distributed) may not qualify as open source. One step further, public free binaries can be reverse engineered (the legality of which isn't something I'm well versed in). Which may not be in a companies current best long-term interest.

Tldr; The largest effort to being 100% open source is the library of code built on must also be open source or commonly distributed. Starting at 0 the current goal is 20%.

Provide costs don't rise too much expect 30% within 2 to 3 years (I'm being optimistic) or the next major government project timeline.

Re: The People's Code

#28

Post by zanny »

tommynicholas wrote: post #19

If there's one thing that deserves a federal massive budget, it's this. If laws and regulations can be understood easily by software, we would remove so many problems the government creates. Complexity would be easier to manage, but also transparency would inherently breed simplicity.

Just for an example, HNR Block and other companies built on doing your taxes for you lobby the government to prevent simplification of the tax code, because they profit off its complexity.

The same applies to almost all law. The complexity does not exist without a reason - there is almost always some entity actively funding the continued obfuscation of law for profit.

So don't expect government to ever actively get simpler, because that would only benefit the outsiders rather than incumbents in the industries such laws affect, and those outsiders never have the capital to compete in lobbying and bribery.

Re: The People's Code

#29

Post by leesalminen »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #20
methodin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only imagine the nightmare attempting to explain to non-tech folks why it's good to give away the code they are writing.

We give away the laws we write. In fact, the government provides an awful lot of services. If the taxpayer paid for it, the taxpayer should certainly be able to own it. I've never personally found it difficult to explain that to non-technical people.

I think even a 5 year old can understand "if I paid for something, it's mine".

Re: The People's Code

#30

Post by joshdotsmith »

random_rr wrote: post #21
joshdotsmith wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think takes the most effort to make these projects open source? If this were the policy for all new projects, why would that be difficult?

There is a lot of internal resistance to open sourcing code. Lots of people believe that their code is their secret sauce - and why would you have highly paid consultants create code just so the next department can take it? There's also security concerns to take into account - which I know someone will say is a good thing, because of transparency and so forth. But just realize that it's not a trivial amount of work t…

Those reasons, which surely place some non-negligible burden on the teams involved, do not seem to be so overwhelming as to ultimately dictate that 80% of projects are not made open source.

I'm definitely aware of the difficulties involved in open sourcing significant amounts of your work. The bigger burden is less, in my opinion, about cleaning up your code base. If you're committing potential security vulnerabilities into your code that are then tracked by your version control system – and you're a Federal agency – that's already a problem that's just going to be exacerbated by making it public; making that code private doesn't make the problem disappear.

The real meaty problems that all open source projects share is people: people like me who come in and overwhelm the project with support requests. I just opened four issues tonight just for this website, in the span of several minutes. (Sorry team!) If you already have poor project management practices in place, or your team is too small, this can quickly overload you.

Of course, with a vibrant community around your project, even the social and management problems could become trivial with time. Look at especially great examples like Hoodie. Given the number of technical people who have left cushy, high-paying jobs to serve in 18F, USDS, and the other alphabet agencies of late, I have to imagine the rallying cry to support truly useful code by compassionate people will be significant enough to justify the upfront expense here.

Not only is 20% not perfect, I don't think it's enough. I want 100%, and I think it's a fair request as a taxpayer, even if there is some burden. This country has fought two world wars and gone to the moon. We can always do better.

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