Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

linuxjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 277 posts

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#241

Post by rishav_sharan »

ip26 wrote: post #131
ar_lan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in a state government job as a student intern, and they said they wanted an internal directory for some various tasks. You can think of it like an inventory manager sort of website, purely on our intranet. The mad lad my lead was, said we would need a database for retaining some of the basic data we needed to keep track of. Nothing all that special, just a few tables, and by nature nothing sensitive wo…

I guess in their defense, databases were pretty famous for being a huge attack surface for many years.

hand rolled file based storage solutions will likely be less secure than battle tested dbs.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#242

Post by anticensor »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #214
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What usually happens is that it doesn't get released at all. It isn't worth the effort. I've got tons of code I've written over the years that, if I could just throw it onto github, I would. But since it would take me six weeks of pain, I don't. Some of that code I'm kind of proud of, or was at the time I wrote it, anyway. I wrote an rviz app a decade before ROS took off.

But if someone files a Freedom of Information requests, that forces the process into motion, right? (If there were more people filing request, I wonder if the internal procedure would be made less painful out of necessity...)

And you would get your information request rejected due to unreasonable efforts required to satisfy.

FOI is meant for information that can legally be published with reasonable effort, but not yet available.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#243

Post by azernik »

throwawayjava wrote: post #190
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an infamous story at my shop. Twenty-some years ago, we used a software tool that was an important part of our mission, and it only ran on Silicon Graphics boxes. We needed to buy a new SGI machine, and SGI had started shipping all of their machines with built in monitor cameras, the first company to do so. Digital cameras were at that time strictly prohibited from even being on the premises. So my friend goe…

> They think for a minute and reply: “by policy, you cannot purchase a digital camera through the procurement office. Therefore, your computers do not have digital cameras in them.” They were being intentionally daft. The person who told him that almost certainly did so with a wink and a nod, and saved your protagonist a lot of pain.

And probably were shocked at getting the call for a very smart reason - this is a classic kitbag question.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#244

Post by de_watcher »

Sean-Der wrote: post #67
AdrianB1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more than one country in the world. Let's say country A is paying for some software and open source it, the rest of the world can get it. That may be fair if everyone is doing the same and contributing fairly (hard to assess that), but if countries A,B,C are the only ones contributing (paying) and everyone else just use, then it is not fair or sensible. More than that, there is no "public paid", just "tax pa…

Country A isn't losing anything by allowing others to use it. Even if no one contributes back developers can spend that time doing other valuable work, rather then re-invent the wheel in every country around the world.

Country A has to pay more for development because the company won't be payed again for this software by countries B and C.

So to start the FOSS process there is a need to somehow have for each niche a GPL software base that cuts costs by a lot.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#245

Post by kazagistar »

joshvm wrote: post #188
kerkeslager wrote: post #36

Most posts on this thread are focusing on exceptional cases where there are obvious reasons not to open the source, such as defense, but huge amounts of publicly-funded code is locked up for no reason whatsoever. Let's discuss some use cases that make more sense: 1. healthcare.gov 2. Stoplights/traffic control cameras. 3. Voting machines. 4. Electrical grid. 5. IRS.

Are all of these publicly funded? There are companies (including Siemens, for example) which build traffic lights and sell the control software and algorithms for eg car and pedestrian detection. See https://www.speedcamerasuk.com/speed-camera-types.htm In a lot of places, the government decides that a service is required and companies bid for the construction rights. Just because public money was used to buy a servi…

> Just because public money was used to buy a service doesn't make the IP the property of the public.

No, but it could. Might raise costs initially, but the idea is that enforcing such a spending policy would lower costs and reduce duplication long term. Not to mention that having law and beurocracy enforced by closed source systems is a major threat to freedom and democracy, of course.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#248

Post by jve »

wwweston wrote: post #197
ar_lan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in a state government job as a student intern, and they said they wanted an internal directory for some various tasks. You can think of it like an inventory manager sort of website, purely on our intranet. The mad lad my lead was, said we would need a database for retaining some of the basic data we needed to keep track of. Nothing all that special, just a few tables, and by nature nothing sensitive wo…

> This got rejected immediately, and our IT literally cited "no database installations are allowed per security team." This is common enough across a variety of organizations (I've certainly run into the same issue at several large-ish companies) and isn't necessarily unreasonable... if IT also provides a process for getting what you need with their oversight/help (bonus if some part of the IT team actually has skill…

> This is common enough across a variety of organizations... and isn't necessarily unreasonable

So, how are applications supposed to store/retrieve data?

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#249

Post by swish_bob »

rtkwe wrote: post #69
dragontamer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. https://www.healthcare.gov/developers/ 2, 3, and 4 are made by private companies. Not government. 5. Probably a good idea.

> 5. Probably a good idea. You probably wouldn't want their fraud detection/audit selection software published. No matter how good it is releasing it gives people a chance to better avoid detection.

That kind of depends. The software could easily be published without publishing the rules/models that are being run. While knowing what sort of parameters are available to the rules/models might make it easier to identify attacks that aren't going to be found, that's not a given.

Re: If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

#250

Post by tremon »

jve wrote: post #248
wwweston wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This got rejected immediately, and our IT literally cited "no database installations are allowed per security team." This is common enough across a variety of organizations (I've certainly run into the same issue at several large-ish companies) and isn't necessarily unreasonable... if IT also provides a process for getting what you need with their oversight/help (bonus if some part of the IT team actually has skill…

> This is common enough across a variety of organizations... and isn't necessarily unreasonable So, how are applications supposed to store/retrieve data?

I guess they use a tuple store backend.
Post reply on HN