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Public Money, Public Code

publiccode.eu

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Re: Public Money, Public Code

#21

Post by burnished »

GabeIsko wrote: post #11
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 b…

Seems like in your example they should make or buy as they see best fit, but if they make they should make it public. If it could conceivably be a military secret then I expect it would be exempt.

I don't see anything about copyleft style policies here which you seem to be referencing heavily, where are you getting that from?

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#22

Post by mdmglr »

There are already processes in place to make code developed from tax payer funded R&D available to American companies with a licensing agreement. To protect my anonymity I cannot elaborate more.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#23

Post by askvictor »

edrxty wrote: post #14
redox99 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The software isn't that difficult part though.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#24

Post by dragonwriter »

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 it is actually produced by the federal government, it can’t be open source because it is already public domain.

“Public money, public code” either refers, in the US, exclusively to state governments, or it applies to software developed under government contracts (and possibly other software purchased by government), not just software developed by the government itself.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#26

Post by q845712 »

richbell wrote: post #12
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 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.

I've worked on closed source corporate software most of my career and then primarily corporate-sponsored open source in the last two years. In my own limited experience, it is strictly less work to have closed-source software. There's less concern / hesitations / hand-wringing over mover quickly when you have the illusion of privacy, and relatedly having a requirement that (almost) everything (eventually) becomes public only adds steps. Certain things always have to happen privately (examples include: internal discussions that include organizationally privileged information, certain CVE handling steps, fully secured builds with proper corporate attestations, and internal project-tracking) so you wind up with a private set of systems to maintain as well as the public ones.

Maybe there's some orgs out there that "do it right" in terms of having OSS projects not add overhead, but I doubt it's possible in orgs with as much need for privacy and security as most fortune 1k co.s and governments.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#27

Post by tptacek »

vermilingua wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is my yardstick and also my prediction for the impact of a scheme like this.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#28

Post by EMIRELADERO »

dragonwriter wrote: post #24
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 it is actually produced by the federal government, it can’t be open source because it is already public domain. “Public money, public code” either refers, in the US, exclusively to state governments, or it applies to software developed under government contracts (and possibly other software purchased by government), not just software developed by the government itself.

I did my research and the public domain mandate for federal works apparently doesn't apply to the states. Some states actually enforce their copyrights and have whole licensing systems for state government-produced works.

Isn't this a whole 1st Amendment violation? The law is intended for private parties and the 1st is incorporated to the states since a very long time. Has anyone sued over this?

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#29

Post by arp242 »

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.

That kind of nuance seems implicit, and isn't something that needs to be mentioned in a campaign to get the basic idea across. Remember that this is aimed to people are not really familiar with these sort of ideas at all.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#30

Post by EMIRELADERO »

q845712 wrote: post #26
richbell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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. I've worked on closed source corporate software most of my career and then primarily corporate-sponsored open source in the last two years. In my own limited experience, it is strictly less work to ha…

> Maybe there's some orgs out there that "do it right" in terms of having OSS projects not add overhead, but I doubt it's possible in orgs with as much need for privacy and security as most fortune 1k co.s and governments.

To the contrary, governmemt is where the need for transparency should be at its highest. Putting "efficiency" or "speed" above transparency about the inner workings of publicly-funded and publicly-made (by government employees) software is insane.

There should not be any expectation of privacy for government employees in the field of records and information.

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