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The People's Code

code.gov

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Re: The People's Code

#31

Post by leesalminen »

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 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.

Are you saying the federal government is running insecure code in production? I'm shocked. /s

Re: The People's Code

#32

Post by Forge36 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #25
random_rr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Assuming that's true, private companies contracted by the government may not be under that same requirement (think military specs and designs). The output as a whole may be public domain (I know what an F22 is, and the parts to build one, but the specs to those parts are proprietary) but the operations, and binaries,(specs and requirements to build the individual pieces) to produce that output may remain private.

Re: The People's Code

#33

Post by aarongolliver »

autoreleasepool wrote: post #24
desdiv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They are not exercising a copyright claim when they don't release things, they're just not releasing them. Public domain only helps you if you have access to the work.

Re: The People's Code

#34

Post by myowncrapulence »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #9

I really like the work of folks at 18F, USDS, CFPB, et al. Bearing in mind that I'm ecstatic to see this collection of projects and someone clearly put a lot of time and effort into this already, I do have couple points of hopefully constructive feedback here: - Please list all of your repositories and feature ones that you think deserve special recognition. Seeing all your repos is a 4-step process otherwise: click…

I really hope this sort of promotion of innovating in the tech sector remains growing.. with the current political climate, I doubt many sectors (besides military/finance) will see governmental spending growth in coming years.

Re: The People's Code

#35

Post by serge2k »

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…

> There is a lot of internal resistance to open sourcing code

Too fucking bad. Do it or get fired.

Re: The People's Code

#36

Post by bretthoerner »

former_govt wrote: post #7

I admire the work that 18F is doing, and live in the DC area, even contracted for the government early in my career -- but I can never go back. I just fundamentally disagree with the security clearance apparatus is in place and never want to subject myself to that again. Especially when purely private companies pay more and don't care what you do in your personal time. Working for the government felt like being a chi…

What was so bad about the security clearance aspect?

Re: The People's Code

#37

Post by xbryanx »

X86BSD wrote: post #23
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.

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?

The work to open source something is often extra work. So it would effectively increase the cost or, keeping costs fixed, reduce the impact of the software on it initial target...those who it was developed for.

I also imagine that in many cases the effort to open source some project would be much greater than the pay off. There are many custom software solutions developed that are of almost no value outside of the small domain specific target audience.

Re: The People's Code

#40

Post by ncallaway »

joshdotsmith wrote: post #9

I really like the work of folks at 18F, USDS, CFPB, et al. Bearing in mind that I'm ecstatic to see this collection of projects and someone clearly put a lot of time and effort into this already, I do have couple points of hopefully constructive feedback here: - Please list all of your repositories and feature ones that you think deserve special recognition. Seeing all your repos is a 4-step process otherwise: click…

I'm impressed with how quickly they responded to [3], but unfortunately the answer was exactly what I expected on this one.

> We fought the law and the law won unfortunately. We're hoping to get more leeway on this in the near future from the legal team. Stay tuned!

Lawyers. The answer is always lawyers.

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