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Public Money, Public Code

publiccode.eu

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Re: Public Money, Public Code

#141

Post by GabeIsko »

burnished wrote: post #60
GabeIsko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that is how the government operates - what is the point of requiring the government to have all the software they develop be open source when they are contracting out all software development to contractors that develop on proprietary platforms? It's not like the government is hiring software engineers in a meaningful capacity, at least not the US government.

I don't know what to tell you (tried and failed to get a number for programmers employed by the USG, its enough that they have a reputation for not paying as well as private sector), but it sounds like you made up a requirement and got mad about it?

I'm not mad. But if your goal is to open source code and software developed with taxpayer money, its not as straightforward as this initiative makes it out to be.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#142

Post by GabeIsko »

bombolo wrote: post #70
GabeIsko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Would AWS release all their source code to retain their largest customer, the US government? Yes. Companies would comply with whatever requirement to have the US government as a customer.

They could sue, they could drop them as a client and not bid, they could offer reduced services like they already do with gov cloud, there are a lot of ways this could play out. Apple has shown that private corporations aren't ready to blindly comply with the US government if it doest suit their business interests.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#143

Post by starefossen »

tootie wrote: post #117
starefossen wrote: post #62

The largest branch of the Norwegian government, Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), have adopted this this policy since 2018 and now we have over 2000 public repositories on https://github.com/navikt and https://github.com/nais (last one is our platform organization)

I work for a nonprofit. Most of git repos are public but nobody cares. It's all pretty uninteresting.

For us it is a matter of building trust and allowing others to help if they choose so. We don’t expect many outside contributions.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#144

Post by tptacek »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #137
idlewords wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full text of the First Amendment is short: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Where is the connection to requiring anything to be put in the public domain?

By enforcing copyright law, states restrict the freedom of speech of their citizens by prohibiting/going after certain kinds of expression (someone relying the state government's own speech is in itself speech) In order to not be unconstitutional, therefore, copyright law should be interpreted as not protecting state works.

Copyright is itself in the constitution.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#145

Post by sam_lowry_ »

spapas82 wrote: post #138
pms wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point out that things are not as they should be and argue that changing them will be hard, because that's how they are... to me, these points are a great motivation to introduce the legislature: A. Such initiatives make government aware of the value of open-source systems to the public. B. Ok, then this legislature would contribute to the reduction of inequality. C. Better to fix bugs early than wait until they h…

A. Few people outside of tech care; this won't bring votes. B. Yes but the private contractors like the current status quo. More profit for them. C. It's not always possible. Bureaucracy is a very big factor in such cases and it can't be fixed. D. Of course not. The thing is that there are a lot of people that "profit" from this situation. And unfortunately these are more or less the same people that can decide in fa…

A. Tech is huge. 4% of US workforce is the universally cited number.

EU ICT workers are 9 mln out of 193mln workforce, this is 4.7%. We are just not aware of our political power.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#146

Post by sam_lowry_ »

spapas82 wrote: post #138
pms wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point out that things are not as they should be and argue that changing them will be hard, because that's how they are... to me, these points are a great motivation to introduce the legislature: A. Such initiatives make government aware of the value of open-source systems to the public. B. Ok, then this legislature would contribute to the reduction of inequality. C. Better to fix bugs early than wait until they h…

A. Few people outside of tech care; this won't bring votes. B. Yes but the private contractors like the current status quo. More profit for them. C. It's not always possible. Bureaucracy is a very big factor in such cases and it can't be fixed. D. Of course not. The thing is that there are a lot of people that "profit" from this situation. And unfortunately these are more or less the same people that can decide in fa…

B. I work for public institutions, and I use Postgres, not Oracle. When Docker Desktop hit, we moved to podman. Public procurement is a hell, Open Source is the default option and only RedHat and VMWare still reap billions in profits from new public contracts.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#147

Post by sam_lowry_ »

spapas82 wrote: post #138
pms wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point out that things are not as they should be and argue that changing them will be hard, because that's how they are... to me, these points are a great motivation to introduce the legislature: A. Such initiatives make government aware of the value of open-source systems to the public. B. Ok, then this legislature would contribute to the reduction of inequality. C. Better to fix bugs early than wait until they h…

A. Few people outside of tech care; this won't bring votes. B. Yes but the private contractors like the current status quo. More profit for them. C. It's not always possible. Bureaucracy is a very big factor in such cases and it can't be fixed. D. Of course not. The thing is that there are a lot of people that "profit" from this situation. And unfortunately these are more or less the same people that can decide in fa…

C. Biggest roadblock to opensourcing is low quality of code. When we open-source, it is usually total crap that only hinders the image of public institutions. Really important, high-value code stays in private hands like this price matching algorithm for EU energy markets [1]

[1] https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/globalassets/download-center/s...

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#148

Post by sam_lowry_ »

spapas82 wrote: post #138
pms wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You point out that things are not as they should be and argue that changing them will be hard, because that's how they are... to me, these points are a great motivation to introduce the legislature: A. Such initiatives make government aware of the value of open-source systems to the public. B. Ok, then this legislature would contribute to the reduction of inequality. C. Better to fix bugs early than wait until they h…

A. Few people outside of tech care; this won't bring votes. B. Yes but the private contractors like the current status quo. More profit for them. C. It's not always possible. Bureaucracy is a very big factor in such cases and it can't be fixed. D. Of course not. The thing is that there are a lot of people that "profit" from this situation. And unfortunately these are more or less the same people that can decide in fa…

D. How would you audit open source? Using sloccount and its estimate of man-hours based on Basic COCOMO model? This is laughable at best. Yes, it puts public spending under scrutiny and puts public institutions into a defense position. But this is how things are in healthy democracies already.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#150

Post by EMIRELADERO »

tptacek wrote: post #144
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By enforcing copyright law, states restrict the freedom of speech of their citizens by prohibiting/going after certain kinds of expression (someone relying the state government's own speech is in itself speech) In order to not be unconstitutional, therefore, copyright law should be interpreted as not protecting state works.

Copyright is itself in the constitution.

Correct, but the 1st is stronger. This is why fair use even exists. In order to coexist with the first amendment, the copyright clause must allow some wiggle room for freedom of expression and balancing the rightsholder's interests with society's.

Since these "safety valves" exist even for enforcement of the copyrights of private parties, a state government's enforcement would be even more, if not entirely thwarted by the free speech clause.

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