If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by zimablue » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 11:18 AM UTC

uberman wrote: post #14

Would 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?

This it getting downvoted maybe because it sounds nasty, but I think there's a relevant point here. Govt open source funding is something that external countries can benefit from, but I think a) the US is so big that any unfairness to them would be outweighed by benefits to themselves and society b) I have an uninformed guess that most government software is not groundbreakingly brilliant so there's quite a small subset that would be interesting to "steal", c) for smaller countries maybe this should be a treaty thing, would be interesting for example for the EU to vote on it, or put it into trade deals.

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

#252

Post by k__ » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

ar_lan wrote: post #102

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 used to work in a state government job as a student intern, and they said they wanted an internal directory for some various tasks. You can think of it like an inventory manager sort of website, purely on our intranet. The mad lad my lead was, said we would need a database for retaining some of the basic data we needed to keep track of. Nothing all that special, just a few tables, and by nature nothing sensitive wo…

Had the same problem at a big corp once.

They got MS Office approved for all PCs, so we ended up building all based on Excel, Word and Access.

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

#253

Post by lifeisstillgood » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

I have been banging on about this for years - please see http://oss4gov.org/manifesto

It's hard to make headway with the chicken and egg problem - if there was a good OSS system for a government need, the government could be persuaded to use it - but you can't write one without the initial investment which you cannot get because VC won't fund it ...

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

#254

Post by mruts » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #96

phiresky wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth is not a zero sum game.

In a finite system, it is.

..which we don't have and no one, ever, has lived in.

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

#255

Post by oriettaxx » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 12:12 PM UTC

In Italy it is mandatory, thanks to a great law https://medium.com/team-per-la-trasformazione-digitale/open-...

Unfortunately the law does not include any sanctions if one does not act accordingly :( but it's sure better then nothing

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

#256

Post by dwheeler » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 12:35 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #118

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'm joining the Air Force as a Civilian with the explicit purpose of solving this. In fact we've made a lot of progress with Continuous ATO and some other efforts to get faster iteration, deployment, sharing CI/CD etc... processes in place. It's going to take time but we're on the right track. Send me a message if you want to be involved in this culture change.

Please join the mil-oss mailing list. I think you'll be glad you did.

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

#257

Post by TheForumTroll » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 12:46 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #231

anth_anm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't care about what the government does, subject to the bounds of "don't touch my money". The ones who do care more than that tend to be absolutely awful.

Like Tesla? Or Patagonia, or REI, or allbirds, or bullfrog power, or seventh generation?

>The ones who do care more than that

"Like Tesla?"

>tend to be absolutely awful.

Exactly.

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

#258

Post by fithisux » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

I am 100% with this logic.

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

#259

Post by dwheeler » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

bovermyer wrote: post #11

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.

It would never be implemented that way. At most it'd be "by default, software developed with government funding is released as open source software". Specialty weapon systems would quickly request and get an exemption.

But the reality is that even in weapon systems there's lots of "boring code" that would make sense to have as open source software. A lot of it involves "move bits from A to B", "calculate this matrix", and so on that are not really special (you can find the basic algorithms publicly) - but having a way to share the costs with others who need it would be valuable.

You can find the US Department of Defense (DoD) OSS FAQ here: https://dodcio.defense.gov/open-source-software-faq/

Here's the US DoD OSS policy (2009): https://dodcio.defense.gov/portals/0/documents/foss/2009oss....

The DoD policy does not require release by default as open source software (OSS), but there IS a short discussion of when it's okay to release software as OSS when it's funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) - and it's quite open-ended.

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

#260

Post by GlenTheMachine » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #238

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…

Government development can be bad, but it's nothing compared with most other large verticals (bio, insurance, finance, air lines...). None of the absolute statements here are remotely close to universally applicable (check out forge, 18f, national labs, the recent NSA ghidra announcement, etc). > Setting up a git repository Git != GitHub > Every single patch has to be pushed through a public release process Rebase is…

I'm speaking to my experience in the DoD. Other agencies have different policies and procedures, and operate under different motivations and legal frameworks.