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Public Money, Public Code

publiccode.eu

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131–140 of 216 posts

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#131

Post by squinta »

Italian Digital public administration code (CAD - Codice amministrazione digitale, art. 68 and 69) requires software created with public money to be open sourced and made accessible for reuse by everyone. https://developers.italia.it/en/reuse

Formerly it was accessible only to other public administrations. That provision didn't generate any meaningful outcomes as it was not avalable to other developers, just to public administrations in-house developers. With the last reform of the CAD in 2016, it was open to everyone and development of digital public services accelerated.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#132

Post by [deleted] »

ldoughty wrote: post #71
postalrat wrote: post #10

The state I lived in developed one of those covid tracking apps. I asked for the source code and was told it wasn't available and would never be. I talked to people working on other software developed for the state and they all think that software shouldn't be public. It seems crazy to me that taxpayers pay for this software but it doesn't belong to them. Knowing what I do know I gotta wonder if it's just about those…

This is the kind of issue that causes all that government bloat... If I was a state employee and I wrote the app, and I had to release the source code, then I'm making it very easy for a bad actor to find a vulnerability and exploit it to leak the data of citizens. One might respond: "Well software shouldn't have those holes! Just because it's closed source, doesn't mean that won't happen anyway Also true, in an idea…

[deleted]

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#133

Post by b20000 »

Rexxar wrote: post #123
b20000 wrote: post #66

I know of several situations where entrepreneurs in europe put substantial money on the table in projects which were funded by grants from the government. It would be really bad for entrepreneurship in europe if it would be required to make software open source the moment some grant money is involved. Let's imagine you spend 500K of your savings, and the government gives you a 50K grant. Now you need to open source y…

This doesn't require open source for everything that receive a grant. The text of the open letter is “Implement legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence.” It's more like if the tax office build a software to compute taxes, you can use it to compute your taxes, add a simplified a gui for basic users or…

i understand, but the next step is what i wrote.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#134

Post by b20000 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #127
b20000 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, in good european fashion, there will be all kinds of complicated and time consuming rules and processes. that is what the countries in the EU and the commission do best. make it nearly impossible for small bootstrapped companies to be competitive and get their shit done. and if I as an entrepreneur put money into something, I expect to own it. even if a grant was involved. after all, I already paid taxes to m…

Frankly it sounds like you're prematurely grinding your axe. We don't have enough details to really form an opinion like that. As a fellow entrepreneur I am excited at the idea of more open collaboration/resources for people writing code. Hell imagine a world without GitHub. I'm curious to see the nitty gritty here myself.

the reason why i react like this is that i have seen a proposal like what i describe a few years ago in a country in europe.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#135

Post by munk-a »

gehwartzen wrote: post #106
UncleEntity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And just to throw in a silly extrapolation... I would love an M109 Paladin tank... my tax dollars pay for them :-) If they give you a tank they have one less tank to do stuff with but if they give you a copy of software they still have the ability to do stuff with the software. There’s a whole bunch of software out there that has been open sourced by government agencies like nasa and you don’t see satellites fallin…

I'm not in software so maybe my viewpoint is just different but I also wouldn't expect NASA to give me the mechanical blueprints for a rocket, or even a concrete launch pad nor would I expect the local government to give me the the electrical schematics for the stop light systems, even though doing so would in no way prevent them from continuing to use these systems/items

Honestly, why not? It's quite likely there has been a decent amount of information passing back and forth between NASA and various private space companies - there isn't a sane reason to require everyone to make the same mistakes that you've already learned from. Additionally while releasing rocket specifications probably won't result in any at-scale replicas it's a good way to feed the hobbiest community and possibly get some neat ideas back.

There are some components of rocketry that deserve careful consideration in sharing (i.e. rocket fuels) but a lot of those have mostly leaked at this point and the government has other reasons to limit their production and thus limits the supply of chemical components.

Much like with software there are going to be some secret components related to communication and the like - but those can be cherry picked from the information and deliberately hidden... similar to how most software teams don't check all their private SSH keys into public repos (usually).

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#136

Post by sublimefire »

Interesting comments throughout but..

- Selling to public sector is a costly and lengthy process. Not to mention the lack of competence from the public sector partners.

- Usually, the money is made by making sure the entity will subscribe for as long as possible, and it should be possible to repackage the same software and sell to somebody else with little effort.

- Open sourcing puts the company into a position where it's own code could be reused by the competitor without investing as much.

- Furthermore, the projects are usually short lived due to the nature of procurement, budgeting and changing regulations.

- It is a risky business that requires complicated solutions to complicated problems, not much of it is reusable outside of the specific domain.

I was developing such software for years. Better ask yourself why huge IT departments are doing barely anything despite their funding.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#137

Post by jmole »

giobox wrote: post #21

I've often wondered if we need to radically change the State's relationship with the software it produces. As Robert Lessig famously observed, "code is law" in a world controlled by computers. There is increasingly a strong argument I feel in States directly employing software engineers much like they typically employ armies of civil servants to implement policy. Why is software treated as something to be outsourced…

Code is only half of the problem here. The other half is operations. Applications don't just run on their own; they need deployment, maintenance, backup, recovery, new feature requests, etc. etc.

Unlike the majority of infrastructure in the world, software literally isn't set in stone. This makes it much more powerful in some senses, but also much more fragile.

Look at Hoover Dam - a project designed to last a hundred years with a pretty singular purpose. The operation and maintenance burden is clear, and basically unchanging throughout the lifetime of the dam.

I agree with you in general here, but I think the actual work involved with your proposal is more akin to what the IT departments at agencies like the IRS or DMV are already doing. Specing systems for internal processes, and managing dataflow from old systems to new ones.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#138

Post by mtalantikite »

postalrat wrote: post #10

The state I lived in developed one of those covid tracking apps. I asked for the source code and was told it wasn't available and would never be. I talked to people working on other software developed for the state and they all think that software shouldn't be public. It seems crazy to me that taxpayers pay for this software but it doesn't belong to them. Knowing what I do know I gotta wonder if it's just about those…

I've worked on some government projects (currently working on one), and we always try to open source everything we can. For instance, CMS has a lot of open source repos in their github org (https://github.com/CMSgov).

The mentality is changing in govtech and there are lots of orgs really trying to push for better software practices. It can be a slog though.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#139

Post by 8note »

bumper_crop wrote: post #122

Suppose you are on a committee where you are evaluating 3 different offers to build a website for your city. Bid A is for $10m, Bid B is for $9.5m, and Bid C is for $9m. The company that made offer B knows that they will likely lose the contract so they counter. "If you let us keep the source code and it remains private, we will bid $8.5m for the contract". Since all three vendors are offering equivalent service, and…

Who will do the maintaining on the closed website though? One company has a monopoly on the support

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#140

Post by 8note »

atx42 wrote: post #93
victorvosk wrote: post #79

I mean as nice as this sounds, our money is spent on all sorts of things we know nothing about. Should we all be provided with the schematics for F-35s?

Exactly! Where do you draw the line? Does CIA/NSA have to drop their shorts?

The CIA, maybe not, but the NSA for sure. All the bulk surveillance and so on being done to Americans in america should be completely transparent to its citizens, so they can be clear that their rights are not being stepped on
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