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Public Money, Public Code

publiccode.eu

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Re: Public Money, Public Code

#11

Post by GabeIsko »

anon-3988 wrote: post #2

I am fully in support of such initiative. So I am interested to hear what the possible downsides are? Please share your opinions on the matter as I can only see upsides to this.

I am in support of it too, ultimately, but after working on federal government software projects, it is a very huge uphill battle.

Consider this: your trying to build a grants management system for Defense contractors in Afghanistan. You want to make sure that public money is not going to terrorists sanctioned by the US government. There is a forensic accounting software platform widely used by firms that audit the banking industry,but it is closed source and sold to firms commercially. Should the government spend money on making new software or license the existing software that works extremely well? Should the configuration for what the government creates on that software be open to the public, and open to competitors to imitate? Should they demand that the source code is released? Also what about national security?

Would AWS release all their source code to retain their largest customer, the US government?

I agree that the amount of closed source software used in government projects is staggering and a legitimate barrier to government IT working properly. But the broken process that governments spend money is a bureaucratic nightmare. I am not sure their would be technical downsides, but absolutely their are political ones.

The only thing that I could imagine being an actual downside is the retention of confidential information in the interest of national security or public trust. That is a political minefield already, and open source code can help with security, so I don't even think that is the largest hurdle.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#12

Post by richbell »

charcircuit wrote: post #6

The video says that it's accurate that every night proprietary software is stealing citizen's healthcare data and that the solution is for the government to locate all of the software it needs from scratch and open source it. Why stop at rebuilding all software from scratch? You will also want to rebuild computers from scratch, light bulbs from scratch, etc. The government doesn't need to invent everything from scrat…

> If most talented developers are working private companies, that means that the remaining developers who chose to work for the government are likely more prone to have poor security practices.

This is a fallacious logic.

> Open sourcing code is also extra work that has to be done and will make the software more expensive to make and maintain.

Not if there is an established standard and practice of writing code in an open source way.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#13

Post by GabeIsko »

laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

Obviously there is classified technical information that isn't public, but the DoD is a huge Redhat shop. Food for thought.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#14

Post by edrxty »

redox99 wrote: post #10
laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

> I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. I'd be OK with that.

When you consider that many guided missiles are, in fact, fully autonomous AI robots that chase and kill people, damn straight.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#15

Post by burnished »

laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

Why do you assume that sane and common sense exceptions and nuance are off the table?

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#16

Post by tptacek »

laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

Missile guidance software isn't generally produced by public agencies, right? It's produced by private companies and licensed to the government. The same way Microsoft Windows is.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#17

Post by metadaemon »

krupan wrote: post #3

There will be ignorant arguments against this due to cyber security concerns, enemy nations benefiting from the code, the copyrights of the people/companies who are being paid to write the code, etc., etc.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or genuine sentiment.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#18

Post by jhawleypeters »

burnished wrote: post #15
laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

Why do you assume that sane and common sense exceptions and nuance are off the table?

The linked site speaks in absolute terms, perhaps that's where they got the idea

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#19

Post by vermilingua »

tptacek wrote: post #16
laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

Missile guidance software isn't generally produced by public agencies, right? It's produced by private companies and licensed to the government. The same way Microsoft Windows is.

If that's your yardstick, I'd wager very little software will get published under this scheme

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#20

Post by eyelidlessness »

laserbeam wrote: post #5

There are a lot of good reasons to do this, even if it's just better interop between different branches of the government, all cool. However, you then realize that the military is funded by public money. I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source. The idea is way too simplistic and lacks nuance.

> I'd wager you don't want fighter jet or missile guidance software to be open source.

Why not? I can think of some reasons but they mostly devolve to security by obscurity and a whole lot of assumptions to even get there. The actors who want to know are already in the know. At least open sourcing the rest would be a compelling lever to avoid accidentally escalating conflicts.

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