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Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

jamesmcm.github.io

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Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#51

Post by yholio »

mulmen wrote: post #49
yholio wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not only true for software developed with public funds, but with any software that becomes critical for providing public services, communication in particular. Take for example the recent 5G spying debacle. US claims that the Chinese can insert snooping tech in their hardware, which is of course true. But the same thing is true for gear produced by American or European companies, so we are expected to choose…

How do I know that the cell tower I connect to is running the firmware I personally verified on github.gov?

The trust you have in the phone company is another target of attack than the one discussed here, the fact that operators need to trust closed source blobs in their networks, often times provided by other states with strategic interests in what goes on over their networks.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#52

Post by mulmen »

yholio wrote: post #51
mulmen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I know that the cell tower I connect to is running the firmware I personally verified on github.gov?

The trust you have in the phone company is another target of attack than the one discussed here, the fact that operators need to trust closed source blobs in their networks, often times provided by other states with strategic interests in what goes on over their networks.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Even if the government publishes the source of whatever I am interacting with how do I know the source they publish is the same source I am interacting with?

Nothing stops them from adding some malicious patch before deploying the open code. It’s all still based on trust.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#53

Post by atakiel »

I think the largest barrier for FOSS is still that the greater public doesn't know about FOSS, at all, and even less at the concept level. Because FOSS largely is still not on the daily political agenda, there's no actual talk among the wider masses about the reasons why FOSS is important, or what it actually means. Without wider discussion it's harder for it to gain foothold, as it is very much a political question, when it comes to use of FOSS in government.

Although, this seems to be slowly changing. In Finland, YLE (the national broadcasting company) has recently been systematically bringing up the open source nature of the national Covid app in their reporting.

I think there's a larger cultural revolution waiting for its turn, behind the current open source revolution that has been happening so far mostly in the software field.

In its core, open source is a cultural thing, and maybe a political one, one that due to reasons that were, did found rooting and cultivation initially in the field of software. Regardless of its origins, it's a wider movement that could disrupt every aspect of content creation, if realized as such. E.g. the same discussion that is being had in this thread and in the original article, about FOSS in government, largely applies to a wide field of other types of content created by governments.

One of the larger, self created obstacles for open source lies in the definition itself. Open source is still being defined primarily in the realm of software, and through software. Names and definitions such as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) reprise this problem by anchoring the concept to the world of software, and in this case, it happens already in the name. Instead of FOSS, maybe we should be talking about FOS software?

I think the world could do well with a concept of open source that could be unleashed on all types of content created [1]. FOSS could probably do well, with the larger umbrella concept of FOS hitting daily discussion.

Interestingly, open source as a term doesn't have this package, as source can mean more than just source code.

[1] Creative commons already exists, but that's mainly a license, to be used in certain fields of content creation, not a wider definition for the concept.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#54

Post by yholio »

mulmen wrote: post #52
yholio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trust you have in the phone company is another target of attack than the one discussed here, the fact that operators need to trust closed source blobs in their networks, often times provided by other states with strategic interests in what goes on over their networks.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Even if the government publishes the source of whatever I am interacting with how do I know the source they publish is the same source I am interacting with? Nothing stops them from adding some malicious patch before deploying the open code. It’s all still based on trust.

You are talking about the full chain of trust. I'm an talking about a single link of that chain, the ability of the operators to know their hardware is not under the control of some foreign state actor. This is the topic of the 5G wars. It's a necessary but clearly insufficient condition for what you ask.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#55

Post by vmception »

majkinetor wrote: post #11

Since its taxpayers money, any custom made software for gov MUST be FOSS or we can equally abandon any logic whatsoever - citizens payed for it, gov employees were working with implementation team on shaping it, so it belongs to them. This doesn't have to be so for supportive domains such as databases but I would personally prefer that also (i.e. Postgresql instead Oracle db). There are many more reasons for this the…

So although Government generated IP titles are prohibited except by one-off statutes, the government can engage in work-for-hire or any auto-acquire titles to accomplish the same thing, which is what it does.

So this is how it owns patents, copyrights, closed source software, etc

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#57

Post by sien »

Government does use and create a great deal of open source software.

Github has this list of government and community organisations that use Github :

https://government.github.com/community/

The organisation that I work for has over 200 Github repositories.

The Australian government alone from that Github list is literally supporting thousands of open source repositories. It looks like many other governments around the world are doing the same.

It would be worth going out and working out how many open source repositories governments are supporting.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#58

Post by slg »

fsflover wrote: post #31
majkinetor wrote: post #11

Since its taxpayers money, any custom made software for gov MUST be FOSS or we can equally abandon any logic whatsoever - citizens payed for it, gov employees were working with implementation team on shaping it, so it belongs to them. This doesn't have to be so for supportive domains such as databases but I would personally prefer that also (i.e. Postgresql instead Oracle db). There are many more reasons for this the…

> Since its taxpayers money, any custom made software for gov MUST be FOSS or we can equally abandon any logic whatsoever This is why Free Software Foundation Europe created a petition to make all publicly paid code public: https://publiccode.eu .

How does this apply to militaries and intelligence agencies? I can understand wanting a lot of government software to be FOSS, but maybe the software on spy satellites shouldn't be available to everyone.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#59

Post by Supermancho »

slg wrote: post #58
fsflover wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since its taxpayers money, any custom made software for gov MUST be FOSS or we can equally abandon any logic whatsoever This is why Free Software Foundation Europe created a petition to make all publicly paid code public: https://publiccode.eu .

How does this apply to militaries and intelligence agencies? I can understand wanting a lot of government software to be FOSS, but maybe the software on spy satellites shouldn't be available to everyone.

> maybe the software on spy satellites shouldn't be available to everyone.

I would agree if I felt it made security stronger. I don't feel that way, given I know now that satellite is likely running windows.

OSS serving as a basis, not the end-implementation of a system is how it would work in practice. Just like it does now with contracted vendors.

Re: Governments should adopt and invest in FOSS

#60

Post by GordonS »

RobRivera wrote: post #47
majkinetor wrote: post #11

Since its taxpayers money, any custom made software for gov MUST be FOSS or we can equally abandon any logic whatsoever - citizens payed for it, gov employees were working with implementation team on shaping it, so it belongs to them. This doesn't have to be so for supportive domains such as databases but I would personally prefer that also (i.e. Postgresql instead Oracle db). There are many more reasons for this the…

I have a bold opinion. I believe it is to the benefit of a State that their software be kept secret or proprietary. Of the many reasons i have to believe this, I will say one is as a matter of national security. I hope my public opinion opens a fruitful dialogue.

There was a top post on HN just the other day about "security by obscurity", and how the concept is often misunderstood.

You are invoking the age-old closed vs open source argument - essentially, security by obscurity, but I'm not convinced it's a boon in this case. I believe govs using OSS is a net positive for humankind: there are many more minds and eyeballs on the code, and many more beneficiaries of the code.

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