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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

#171

Post by m0zg »

logfromblammo wrote: post #158
m0zg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really should be a provably unambiguous ruleset that would take in the person's circumstances and numbers and spit out a number, yes. I understand that your post is a joke, but that'd be an _awesome_ thing to have for everyone, especially if coupled with some adversarial tech to find and close loopholes. Which is, ironically, why this isn't going to happen.

This might work: x = gross_income / median_income; if( x Math.ln() is the log function for base e, and Math.li() is the logarithmic integral function. The constants are based on the income at 50 times the median income having a marginal tax rate of 50%, and the median income having a marginal tax rate of 0%. Marginal tax rates above 50% asymptotically approach 100%. There are no loopholes or exemptions. If the median…

There's one fly in this socialist ointment: all the rich people will immediately bail, and go live elsewhere.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#172

Post by [deleted] »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #91

Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by IT…

[deleted]

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dwheeler wrote: post #124
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #91

Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by IT…

Mostly sortof true, but there are lots of complications. I've delved into this. For lots of detail on the current situation, see my paper, "Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government" by David A. Wheeler, https://www.csiac.org/journal-article/publicly-releasing-ope... In almost all cases, if a US Federal employee writes software as part of his/her official duties, then there is no copyr…

>Most software developed by government funds is developed, at least in part, by contractors. And that is a COMPLETELY different circumstance. The details, unsurprisingly, depend on the contract. //

Isn't the point that the contact should have a non-negotiable OSS clause of it's using public funds.

My impression, from my seat in Europe, is that USA government is run by rich capitalists that would as soon eat faeces live on TV as suggest private corporations be required to service the public good?

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#174

Post by vishvananda »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #91

Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by IT…

Contractors have their own hassles when it comes to open source. Pre-openstack, there was a small contracting company called Anso Labs that consisted of a few of us that were creating a private cloud for NASA. After a few months of banging our head against Eucalyptus (java based open-core private cloud software), we decided to write our own version over a weekend and call it Nova. We convinced the civil-servants in charge to allow us to use our new thing, which we continued to improve at NASA. This project eventually became the compute platform for openstack.

There were multiple weeks of meetings with lawyers (including discussions of whether we needed a space act agreement[1]) to figure out how to actually open source the modifications we made on NASA's behalf. Ultimately we ended up having to assign all of the nova copyrights to the government[2] so that they could open source the modifications. I didn't even think that the government could own copyright but apparently it can[3].

[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/partnerships/about.html [2]: https://github.com/openstack/nova/commit/c88d1f033bd600e855c... [3]: https://www.usa.gov/government-works/

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#175

Post by kfrzcode »

fulldecent2 wrote: post #150
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #91

Government scientist here. IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise licensed (although the government can patent things). This does not necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or restricted from release by IT…

I am working on this problem and contributing to https://code.mil . This project explains to DoD managers /how/ to set up an open source policy. It's going to be a long process, but we can do this!

Awesome awesome awesome to see this. I agree, the process will be arduous but it is incredibly achievable!!

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#176

Post by Sniffnoy »

sametmax wrote: post #120
zbruhnke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man it would be pretty amazing to be able to submit a Pull Request to the IRS. Matt Cutts if you're reading this please help! On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening as a result of that

The french equivalent of the IRS did open up their software: https://github.com/GouvernementFR/calculette-impots-m-source... Everybody got very enthousiastic at the begining, then realized: - it was written in a niche proprietary language: M - it was provided with almost zero doc or comments - the process of getting the code was tedious, and the law changes every year - taxes are complicated And so nobody did anythin…

Huh, usually I've seen "M" used to refer to MUMPS. But this appears to be something else -- I guess something proprietary, like you said. I have to wonder where one would look it up, as I imagine searching for information on the M programming language would mostly turn up information about MUMPS...

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#177

Post by dragonwriter »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #173
dwheeler wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly sortof true, but there are lots of complications. I've delved into this. For lots of detail on the current situation, see my paper, "Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government" by David A. Wheeler, https://www.csiac.org/journal-article/publicly-releasing-ope... In almost all cases, if a US Federal employee writes software as part of his/her official duties, then there is no copyr…

>Most software developed by government funds is developed, at least in part, by contractors. And that is a COMPLETELY different circumstance. The details, unsurprisingly, depend on the contract. // Isn't the point that the contact should have a non-negotiable OSS clause of it's using public funds. My impression, from my seat in Europe, is that USA government is run by rich capitalists that would as soon eat faeces li…

> My impression, from my seat in Europe, is that USA government is run by rich capitalists that would as soon eat faeces live on TV as suggest private corporations be required to service the public good?

Not quite true. Rich capitalists largely have better things to do than bother with the details of running government.

But it is, to a large extent, run by people under the influence of (whether directly seeking money, or just manipulated by paid propaganda) rich capitalists who would rather engage in public coprophagia than have such requirements imposed.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #176
sametmax wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The french equivalent of the IRS did open up their software: https://github.com/GouvernementFR/calculette-impots-m-source... Everybody got very enthousiastic at the begining, then realized: - it was written in a niche proprietary language: M - it was provided with almost zero doc or comments - the process of getting the code was tedious, and the law changes every year - taxes are complicated And so nobody did anythin…

Huh, usually I've seen "M" used to refer to MUMPS. But this appears to be something else -- I guess something proprietary, like you said. I have to wonder where one would look it up, as I imagine searching for information on the M programming language would mostly turn up information about MUMPS...

> Huh, usually I've seen "M" used to refer to MUMPS

M is also the name of the built in language in Microsoft Power Query.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#179

Post by basseq »

The thrust of the article changes from "governments should use open source software" to "governments should open-source their custom software" about 2/3rds of the way through. Contrary to the headline, it never goes as far as to say that any government-funded software should be open-source.[1]

The latter precludes the (reasonable) arguments talking about grants and public-private partnerships, of which the intent is to stimulate economic innovation, not produce public code.

I think the proposal is reasonable, but it puts a heavy administrative onus on the government to open-source said code, including potential warranting that the code in question is indeed free of any other copyright or license requirement.

[1] Emphasis mine: "any government code produced with public money..."

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#180

Post by c22 »

uberman wrote: post #44
mulmen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it your position that utilizing open source software is freeloading?

I contribute, I utilize and I appreciate open source and the community of dedicated contributors. Open source software is great and "YES" frankly the vast vast majoring of those involved in the use of open source software are freeloaders. We (yes I include myself) typically sow way less than we reap. This argument though is not about the merits of open source software but about the use of public funds. "If my taxes h…

On the other hand if my taxes went to pay for something I should get to know what it is, shouldn't I? If our elected representatives paid 500 million of our tax dollars for some piece of software shouldn't we be able to audit it and see if that was money well spent? If we can't do this, how will we know which representatives to vote for again?
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