The positive and optimistic side of this is well-documented.
The darker side is that making all publicly-funded software public would also mean making all weapons software public. That could have disastrous consequences.
If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
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Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#12Yeah! NSA fork over those hacking tools!
In a bit of fairness to the NSA (never thought I'd say that), they did give us SELinux, which I think was overall a net good.
Is it though? In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it since it can cause random issues. i.e. The Percona XtraDB install guide.
I find that it's way too complicated of a layer that most people can't/won't learn. Compare this to the OpenBSD pledge and unveil which doesn't get in the way, and there's no way to disable them.
If you make something overly complicated, with the ability to disable it all too easily, then it won't get used.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#13The other point that there are millions of boring crud apps written out there in govt/contractor land. We dont need to see these as open source, its not as if there are lots of devs that love fixing crappy crud apps in their spare time.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#14Would this not imply that if "my" government funded some software that "your" government would be free to take it? I'm not sure I'm keen on subsidizing "your" government all that much.
What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the people of/under "my" government?
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#15It would certainly be interesting to make a pull request for something like Healthcare.gov or something. I wonder if it's measurable how much tax money we could save (if any) if we allowed the public to audit and improve our code.
Providing the source does not mean giving the public commit access.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#16I am an open source advocate, but I don't really agree here. Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Here are some cases where closed source software, with some security by obscurity could be helpful. Another example would be some software around designing nuclear systems. But as an example maybe a software funded by the national weather service to run simulations, that aught to be open source (per…
> Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source?
Yes. Open source, but secret/classified (as necessary, IRS software should be open-source, period). This way the software will be a useful learning/historical resource when it's declassified in the future.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#17I am an open source advocate, but I don't really agree here. Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Here are some cases where closed source software, with some security by obscurity could be helpful. Another example would be some software around designing nuclear systems. But as an example maybe a software funded by the national weather service to run simulations, that aught to be open source (per…
I agree that there may be edge cases where it doesn't make sense to make software open source (although I also think that the majority of software used at IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI could be open source). However, I strongly believe that if the code is not published, it should at least be available to the government itself, s.t. if a vendor goes out of business or the government wants to change vendors they can do so without issues.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#18Would this not imply that if "my" government funded some software that "your" government would be free to take it? I'm not sure I'm keen on subsidizing "your" government all that much. What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the people of/under "my" government?
Is it your position that utilizing open source software is freeloading?
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#19Also of concern is a tragedy of commons like issue where those who contributed no funding are able to get the software for free. For example if a piece of city focused software is FOSS and then a bunch of other cities choose to consume it but not contribute to the funding or code.
I think that's a poor application of tragedy of the commons. Also, in your example, I don't know how other cities' use would impede the funding city's use.
I worked on image analysis software in a wetlab for a particular type of microscopy. They are in just this position: the lab builds and sells software. The fees are low -- on the order of $10-$15k/license. They use the proceeds entirely to fund ongoing development of the software. And the simple fact is, without these license sales, they don't have the resources to fund development. The software is open source in the sense that the licensees are given the source.
If the lab has to give the software away, all development ends, unless you have $300k/year of grants sitting around.
Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a bit of fairness to the NSA (never thought I'd say that), they did give us SELinux, which I think was overall a net good.
Is it though? In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it since it can cause random issues. i.e. The Percona XtraDB install guide. I find that it's way too complicated of a layer that most people can't/won't learn. Compare this to the OpenBSD pledge and unveil which doesn't get in the way, and there's no way to disable them. If you make something overly complicated, with the ability to dis…
>In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it
That is generally bad advice then. selinux is used by Android and Fedora (and hence RHEL & CentOS). selinux can break things, but it is quite stable these days at least for the distro supported packages. The downside is that anything outside the distro packages will likely have no support or will run unconfined. OpenBSD unveil is still new and will face similar challenges in that it will cover the base system well, but for ports, it will be up to the port maintainer to implement it.