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Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

creativecommons.org

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Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#41

Post by chii »

ptero wrote: post #30
jack9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in applied research, we usually build a number of throwaway prototypes before the real system. Those quick prototypes and proofs of concept are often ugly in many ways. So basically you just do normal development? In the commercial world, one of those prototypes usually becomes the production code.

Yes; but I am just saying that putting a bright spotlight on intermediate steps might stifle quick prototyping.

i don't think public code means community driven, or public development.

Just uploading a zip of the final source code is enough to count as public code imho.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#42

Post by criddell »

shanear wrote: post #32

Wholeheartedly agree. There is a big push do this inside the US federal government right now. I work for the United States Digital Service, and at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, almost all application code we write is open source: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs This push is happening in other agencies as well. Check out https://code.gov/ for other shared projects from agencies around the fede…

How has your experience with the USDS been? From a selfish point of view, it seems like a great way to make contacts in the industry while serving your country.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#43

Post by gregman1 »

Example: Public of Andorra gives money to Andorra Programmers to make some cool program that all people need.

Why US Public is allowed to use that code? Andorra's budget is not that big so why people of Andorra should pay for people in States? That's a very good way to not produce Public Code at all.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#44

Post by mattnewton »

gregman1 wrote: post #43

Example: Public of Andorra gives money to Andorra Programmers to make some cool program that all people need. Why US Public is allowed to use that code? Andorra's budget is not that big so why people of Andorra should pay for people in States? That's a very good way to not produce Public Code at all.

There are other benefits, like US public submitting bug fixes, Andorra's code becoming a de-facto standard making it easier for them to hire contractors and support, and the fact that Andorra can use lots of open source from the US already. It's not a zero sum game.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#45

Post by Vinnl »

gregman1 wrote: post #43

Example: Public of Andorra gives money to Andorra Programmers to make some cool program that all people need. Why US Public is allowed to use that code? Andorra's budget is not that big so why people of Andorra should pay for people in States? That's a very good way to not produce Public Code at all.

In the exact scenario you describe, Andorra would spend just as much as it does today, but the American public would benefit from that as well.

In the more likely scenario, Andorra will use the code funded by US citizens.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#46

Post by mmaurizi »

caxistic wrote: post #27

I'd love to see this be adopted in the US, but I'm not holding my breath. There's an example of this in my field that upsets me quite a bit. A set of tools were developed using public funds through federal research grants and other similar mechanisms, with the express purpose of making free alternatives to private tools available. After the project was successfully completed, the leaders of the project decided to sta…

The public return comes in the form of the company that receives the grant paying federal income taxes on their profits.

Commercial profitability is usually a desired goal for these business grants, because the government wants their money back (via taxes).

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#48

Post by shanear »

criddell wrote: post #42
shanear wrote: post #32

Wholeheartedly agree. There is a big push do this inside the US federal government right now. I work for the United States Digital Service, and at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, almost all application code we write is open source: https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs This push is happening in other agencies as well. Check out https://code.gov/ for other shared projects from agencies around the fede…

How has your experience with the USDS been? From a selfish point of view, it seems like a great way to make contacts in the industry while serving your country.

I'm coming up on having been here for two years, and both of those things have been true. It's been a great experience to work alongside top-notch folks from all over the tech industry on problems that deeply impact so many lives.

It's also the best civics lesson you'll ever have. You get to see up close how the federal government runs, good and bad. There's a lot of nuance on how policy, legislation, and technology all interact that I didn't appreciate before I worked for the USDS.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#49

Post by maxxxxx »

daenney wrote: post #22
rvanmil wrote: post #15

I've seen quite some code which was paid for by public money. If this would actually happen it would mostly just expose a tremendous shitheap of "enterprise" code created by consulting firms whose entire business model is based on delivering and "maintaining" overengineered crap with huge maintenance costs.

> If this would actually happen it would mostly just expose a tremendous shitheap of "enterprise" code created by consulting firms whose entire business model is based on delivering and "maintaining" overengineered crap with huge maintenance costs. But that's a good thing to expose too. Might even provide a deterrent to those that are in the habit of producing bad and over-engineered work as it'll be public and poten…

The code may be bad but I am not sure if in many situations it's even possible to get to a much better codebase. At least in my company the processes are often so convoluted that every attempt to automate them will result in a big mess.

I think the message should be that the business process also needs to adapt to the needs of a computer system.

Re: Petition: Public Money Should Produce Public Code

#50

Post by thomastjeffery »

The obvious problem with proprietary code is the questionable quality of consulting companies, etc., but I think the biggest advantage to free software is interoperability.

Right now, there are thousands of data entry jobs, whose sole purpose is to translate data from one system to another, often within the same organization.

A friend of mine who has recently learned simple Visual Basic has told me about what he calls "huge" savings simply from writing scripts to copy and transform data rather than pay people to read and type it.

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