While I generally agree, publishing code commonly requires additional effort and diligence, such as checking the licensing situation of third-party code used, possibly anonymizing the devs involved, maintaining the public repository and credentials, dealing with all the communication from the public caused by publishing the code, and so on.
Hence it also increases the cost for the taxpayers, and that needs to be factored into the cost estimates of software projects. It’s not like they can just dump their git repository into alt.binaries.
I was tangentially related to the covid app stuff so I can offer some insight there: most of those apps weren't built by the state. Google provided an open-source "base app" that could be customized by the states, but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. I've worked in public sector and this is typical. the states can't open source it because they don't own it, they just pay a third-par…
> but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. So the states paid the bills so can license the result any way they want. How can they pay for something and not own it? Sounds to me like there are deep corruption problems
There are lots of things you pay for that you don't own.
What do you mean? If you are a software developer working for a state or city you expect to sell the software you develop for them and collect the money yourself?
If I develop software specific to the public sector and sell it to the government, it is "publicly financed software developed for the public sector". What is my incentive to develop any software at all for public sector, since potential client no. 2 will just take the code that I released? The ask does not state employed by... it just says: “Implement legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed f…
This is already very common in the private sector. Most businesses that require custom software will insist (via contract terms) that they “own” the software.
There’s also licensed deals and subscription services etc. sure, but there’s a ton of custom proprietary software that consultants build (which often contain proprietary business logic).
Custom always costs more of course, but this isn’t a new model by any stretch of the imagination.
Large consulting companies like Accenture have entire divisions of their business devoted to "government". These divisions make money by developing software for governments. It is very much against their interest for this software to be open source because 1) there is visibility into their performance and 2) they can't sell very similar software to the same government if everyone knows what software they've already b…
One reason why government software development is separated from contract development work for private sector clients is that private sector clients understand that they own the results and can disclose that code if they want to. They are relying on bamboozling government clients. All the more reason for struct laws about disclosure of software developed for governments.
I was tangentially related to the covid app stuff so I can offer some insight there: most of those apps weren't built by the state. Google provided an open-source "base app" that could be customized by the states, but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. I've worked in public sector and this is typical. the states can't open source it because they don't own it, they just pay a third-par…
> but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. So the states paid the bills so can license the result any way they want. How can they pay for something and not own it? Sounds to me like there are deep corruption problems
> How can they pay for something and not own it?
They license it.
Renting everything seems to be the fad in business management, and governments often ape business.
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…
My most recent job was for a local government, and even though I made a push for open sourcing our code, I never made much headway. Plus, literally all of the other devs on my team repeatedly committed secure credentials to git no matter how many times I tried to teach them how to use a .gitignore file, so it could have been a bit disastrous if my efforts had actually made any headway
Why do software developers always shoot themselves in the foot with regard to their economic value? Governments pay all the time for development of technology that they buy, but that doesn't mean that the IP is released. For example, the government paid Boeing to develop transport aircraft. However, that does not mean that all the drawings/plans/etc for the aircraft are made public. The government is buying a set of…
> "However, that does not mean that all the drawings/plans/etc for the aircraft are made public." The (US) government actually tried the approach of purchasing a few initial runs and the plans for some missiles, but the results were bad. Initial development costs were high, reliability was low, and manufacturability was poor.
Having private companies control the intellectual property of our defense systems is a disaster that leads to aggressive rent seeking by defense contractors.
Now, missile guidance software may not want to be open source, but the navy engineers down at China Lake should definitely have unrestricted ability to read, modify, and reproduce anything developed in their behalf.
> but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. So the states paid the bills so can license the result any way they want. How can they pay for something and not own it? Sounds to me like there are deep corruption problems
I don't see what corruption has to do with it. I'm a subcontractor and usually the contractual terms are dictated by my clients. If I get the chance however, I put forth my terms and these say that I'm the author of the code and thus the copyright holder.
When I've done freelance work and have been able to write the contract, I include a clause that the client receives "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute the work and such derivative works, and to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third parties," effectively giving them unlimited rights to use my code how they please while still retaining my own copyright.
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 was tangentially related to the covid app stuff so I can offer some insight there: most of those apps weren't built by the state. Google provided an open-source "base app" that could be customized by the states, but most states hired third-party contractors to build an app for them. I've worked in public sector and this is typical. the states can't open source it because they don't own it, they just pay a third-par…
Government outsourcing is the new patronage. And it has the advantage that you can focus the benefits directly to your powerful supporters and from the contractor's side, it gives them a line into government funding that doesn't get cut off as easily if their guy gets voted out as old-style patronage jobs did.