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Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

creativecommons.org

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Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#51

Post by CryptoPunk »

shanear wrote: post #48
criddell wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has your experience with the USDS been? From a selfish point of view, it seems like a great way to make contacts in the industry while serving your country.

I'm coming up on having been here for two years, and both of those things have been true. It's been a great experience to work alongside top-notch folks from all over the tech industry on problems that deeply impact so many lives. It's also the best civics lesson you'll ever have. You get to see up close how the federal government runs, good and bad. There's a lot of nuance on how policy, legislation, and technology…

>>There's a lot of nuance on how policy, legislation, and technology all interact that I didn't appreciate before I worked for the USDS.

Would you mind sharing some of your insights?

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#52

Post by type0 »

rvanmil wrote: post #15

I've seen quite some code which was paid for by public money. If this would actually happen it would mostly just expose a tremendous shitheap of "enterprise" code created by consulting firms whose entire business model is based on delivering and "maintaining" overengineered crap with huge maintenance costs.

> If this would actually happen it would mostly just expose a tremendous shitheap of "enterprise" code created by consulting firms whose entire business model is based on delivering and "maintaining" overengineered crap with huge maintenance costs.

They deliver the same code over and over again to different gov agencies, charge them and leach from tax payers money each and every freaking time. The problem is that politicians know this (heck they even approve it), one would need to eliminate corruption to get it solved unfortunately that's easier said than done.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#53

Post by type0 »

wiz21c wrote: post #29
occultist_throw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I work at a public institution. Our department is paid by many other institutions around the country (networks). Our code is scary and terrifying. It's 95% perl5. We run bare metal on nearly everything. We have only the barest notions of a testbed. Put it this way: if we were required to release our code, nobody would use our services. Frankly, I'm surprised it runs at all. (BTW, other horror stories.. $DB_pa…

I work in public sector too. Some of my code could definitely released (hell, we know about tests, we have thousands of them :-)) For example, we double check a lot of persons' "status" in our programs. We do these checks to ensure that when someone requests help (for example, financial help) for these persons, they are entitled to receive that help. Now that "someone" is a bunch of other institutions as well as a bu…

Good points. I also think that PR departments would cry out loud if the bugs in publicly founded software were too easy to find. The believe in security by obscurity is just too strong there...

Their mindset usually is:

"better keep it hidden, even if we leak citizens private informations all over the internet."

"and at least our funding won't be removed because some shitty paper stumbles on those leaks and makes a big deal about it".

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#55

Post by equalunique »

shanear wrote: post #32

Wholeheartedly agree. There is a big push do this inside the US federal government right now. I work for the United States Digital Service, and at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, almost all application code we write is open source: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs This push is happening in other agencies as well. Check out https://code.gov/ for other shared projects from agencies around the fede…

I work on a VA contract as a systems engineer. I admire the knowledgeable people VA employs to solve it's problems.

Thanks for the link - I did not know they were on GH.

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