
If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source - jrepinc
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/if-software-funded-public-source-its-code-should-be-open-source
======
GlenTheMachine
Government scientist here.

IANAL, but my understanding is that all software written by US government
civil servants is in the public domain. It cannot be copyrighted or otherwise
licensed (although the government _can_ patent things). This does not
necessarily mean that it is available to the public, as noted in the other
comments; it may be classified, considered For Official Use Only, or
restricted from release by ITAR regulations.

Barring any of those cases, you should be able to get a copy by filing a FOIA
request. The problem with FOIA requests is that you have to know specifically
what to request, usually by name. Obviously, it can be hard to put your finger
on exactly what software you are requesting.

The bigger problem, though, is that much of the US government just isn't
technically set up to release software (as opposed to documents). Setting up a
git repository, in the DoD, is an utter nightmare. Every single patch has to
be pushed through a public release process that can take weeks or months and
involves review by as many as ten to fifteen different offices, few if any of
which even know anything about software. If you're setting up your own server,
getting the server itself approved and provisioned can be an exercise in
bureaucratic frustration, and can take literally years to accomplish.

Those of us writing software very often want it to get out there. But the
structure of the organization makes that excruciatingly difficult.

~~~
ar_lan
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 would be tracked.

This got rejected immediately, and our IT literally cited "no database
installations are allowed per security team."

Needless to say 4 months later, after some back and forth, he eventually said
"whatever, we'll just store everything to files then" and that's how he came
up with the world's slowest inventory manager - I suspect just the way they
like it.

~~~
mountainofdeath
Shh... Don't tell them that stuff like SQLite _is_ a flat-file database.

~~~
sametmax
Besides, if you code your own database, at one point from a file to postgres,
is it going to get rejected ?

~~~
sokoloff
"Is this system a database?"

"No sir! It's just a base of data."

<checks spec book> "Very well; carry on then..."

------
kerkeslager
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.

~~~
zbruhnke
Man it would be pretty amazing to be able to submit a Pull Request to the IRS.

Matt Cutts if you're reading this please help!

On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic
controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things happening
as a result of that

~~~
dragontamer
> On another note, I'm not sure I agree on the electrical grid or traffic
> controls being open sourced ... could imagine some nefarious things
> happening as a result of that

Any more nefarious things that can be done with your Linux OS server talking
to your Open Source Chromium / Firefox web browser?

Open Source doesn't necessarily mean less secure.

~~~
keithnz
I'm not sure these things are equivalent, many people use a browser and Linux,
not many people need to use electrical grid software.

However, I would imagine it would still be beneficial for open analysis
though. I'm not sure security through obscurity is a good option when there
are motivated nefarious actors involved. But that's more of a "gut feel" than
based on any evidence

------
unreal37
An unpopular opinion I guess, but the article is saying if you receive
government funding, it should be open source.

That's more than just government employees making code. It's also any company,
individual or agency that even accepts $1 of public grant money or any
external contracts.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of coders who's daily job is
partially funded by the government having to push their code public.

I worked for an ad agency for a time that created websites and sent emails for
tourism. The tourism website needs to be open source? The program that sends
out discount coupons to public attractions and parks? Each HTML email I code
needs to be submitted to repository somewhere?

I don't think people realize just how many millions of lines of code per day
we're talking about here. Most of them being inconsequential things.
99.999999% of that being noise.

You've just jacked up the cost of working with the government. More time spent
coding. More documentation for things that shouldn't need it. More time spent
with compliance issues. Companies need to charge more. More tax dollars
wasted.

~~~
coryrc
Yes, you should need to make it open source. There's no reason to have a
different backend for every town in the USA; less work for you to do and less
money to be spent redundantly.

------
ecshafer
I am an open source advocate, but I don't really agree here. Should the IRS,
NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source? Here are some cases where closed
source software, with some security by obscurity could be helpful. Another
example would be some software around designing nuclear systems.

But as an example maybe a software funded by the national weather service to
run simulations, that aught to be open source (perhaps something like that
exists and is open source, that's not my area).

But a counter argument to mine could be that some software that is security
focused might be more secure if it was open source. I think this is an area
with a lot of nuance, and absolute statements are hard to make.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Should the IRS, NSA, CIA, and FBI code all be open source?

Yes. Open source, but secret/classified (as necessary, IRS software should be
open-source, period). This way the software will be a useful
learning/historical resource when it's declassified in the future.

~~~
vanderZwan
Also, electronic voting. Not that electronic voting booths will ever be a good
idea, but forcing them to open source their stuff will hopefully deter people
from even trying (and if not it will make it even more blatantly visible that
these things are terrible).

It's just like the biggest argument for open source in science: it is required
for proper accountability.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
Most of the code in electronic voting is owned by the vendors though so by the
same standard would we have to open source any 3rd party software the govt
aquires?

~~~
vanderZwan
I don't quite follow your line of thinking here:

\- currently most electronic voting software is owned by the vendors

\- electronic voting should really not be trusted, period, but _definitely_
not be allowed to be closed source

\- therefore, we should ban any electronic voting software not made on open
source software (arguably even hardware)

\- therefore, I am implying vendors _of electronic voting software_ should
only be allowed to use a fully open source software stack in their final
product

I do not see the jump from this reasoning to _any_ software used by the
government must be open source (if I understand you correctly).

~~~
throwawaymath
That's a lot more involved and domain-specific than the question of whether or
not government-owned code should be open source.

The person you're responding to is just making the positive observation that,
since electronic voting software is licensed - not produced - by the
government, you can't mandate it be open sourced via e.g. a FOIA request.

You are making a normative declaration that it _should_ be open sourced
because it's important and intrinsically untrusted software, and as a
consequence it either will be or electronic voting won't be possible. These
are separate things. You're talking about what ought to be, the other
commenter is talking about what (currently) is.

~~~
vanderZwan
Right, I see where GP and I were talking past each other now now. Thank you
for clarifying!

------
dwheeler
I'm surprised no one has mentioned code.gov - see
[https://code.gov/](https://code.gov/)

This is part of the implementation of M-16-21, which said, "Each agency shall
release as OSS at least 20 percent of its new custom-developed code each year
for the term of the pilot program. (3 years)".

~~~
bluetwo
Hey!!! Look!!! Actual Knowledge!!

------
jamessantiago
At the very least publically funded code should be open between government
departments. There seems to be a lot of internally developed work that is
unnecessarily replicated or lost just due to having no obligation or available
resources to share or collaborate. Maybe there needs to be some system in
place to have some sort of internal NDA or need to know check, but this seems
like a good first step.

~~~
staplers
You're assuming government code even uses proper documentation or version
control..

~~~
jamessantiago
I'm assuming they don't. I guess to clarify, I'm desiring that the government
not only mandates that they do use documentation and source control, but that
they commit such code to a repository accessible by other departments. A
minimal readme and "init" push may do the trick, but I'd want my local counsel
to at least be able to pull the code for something like the government's
favorite public website implementation and reuse it at lower cost than redoing
it.

------
basseq
The thrust of the article changes from "governments should _use_ open source
software" to "governments should _open-source_ their custom software" about
2/3rds of the way through. Contrary to the headline, it never goes as far as
to say that any government- _funded_ software should be open-source.[1]

The latter precludes the (reasonable) arguments talking about grants and
public-private partnerships, of which the intent is to stimulate economic
innovation, not produce public code.

I think the proposal is reasonable, but it puts a heavy administrative onus on
the government to open-source said code, including potential warranting that
the code in question is indeed free of any other copyright or license
requirement.

[1] Emphasis mine: "any _government_ code produced with public money..."

------
jamieweb
The NHS (National Health Service) in the UK open-sourced their website
frontend library[1] to allow all of the different hospitals, doctors practises
and clinics to create their websites in-line with a centralised
brand/accessibility standard.

[1] [https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-frontend](https://github.com/nhsuk/nhsuk-
frontend)

------
stupeo
This make sense for some public sources, obviously not all (such as defense).

As it happens, this is exactly what we do at
[http://interneuron.org](http://interneuron.org) for Healthcare software. Most
of our revenue so far has been NHS organisations. We are also a CIC - so a not
for profit.

------
dhcrain
I work on Medicare software for a state that is funded by CMS[1] and it is
freely available to any other state that also is funded by CMS. This has
happened, we handed over the code base to another state and they are
implementing it.

[1][https://www.cms.gov/](https://www.cms.gov/)

------
arcaster
I'm completely okay with power grid and IRS code not being public.

I don't trust it to be built or maintained properly, which also means I'm
relatively sure it'd be open season for troves of people who want to do bad
things.

Open Source is great - but sometimes it makes absolutely no sense.

------
CodeWriter23
So avionics software for our latest fighter planes should be open source? Does
not sound like a very smart idea from that perspective...

------
unicornporn
[https://publiccode.eu/](https://publiccode.eu/)

∆ Surprised this hasn't been shared yet

------
amichal
An example of open source government. [https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-
now-open-source-projec...](https://www.boston.gov/news/bostongov-now-open-
source-project)

They also funded and encourage the open sourcing of the work we are doing for
them [https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-
warehouse](https://github.com/greenriver/hmis-warehouse)

------
westurner
From the US Digital Services Playbook [1]:

> _PLAY 13_

> _Default to open_

> _When we collaborate in the open and publish our data publicly, we can
> improve Government together. By building services more openly and publishing
> open data, we simplify the public’s access to government services and
> information, allow the public to contribute easily, and enable reuse by
> entrepreneurs, nonprofits, other agencies, and the public._

> _Checklist_

> _\- Offer users a mechanism to report bugs and issues, and be responsive to
> these reports_

> [...]

> _\- Ensure that we maintain contractual rights to all custom software
> developed by third parties in a manner that is publishable and reusable at
> no cost_

> [...]

> _\- When appropriate, publish source code of projects or components online_

> [...]

> _Key Questions_

> [...]

> _\- If the codebase has not been released under an open source license,
> explain why._

> _\- What components are made available to the public as open source?_

> [...]

[1] [https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13](https://playbook.cio.gov/#play13)

------
tombert
It would certainly be interesting to make a pull request for something like
Healthcare.gov or something. I wonder if it's measurable how much tax money we
could save (if any) if we allowed the public to audit and improve our code.

~~~
mulmen
Providing the source does not mean giving the public commit access.

~~~
dragonwriter
Having government acquired code be open source licensed from the vendor to the
government doesn't even mean the government publicly discloses the code.

It does mean the government _is free to do so_ , or to hire another vendor to
work on it without restriction.

~~~
tombert
Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released if it's not confidential? I'm
seriously asking; I'm not an expert in these things.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Wouldn't FOIA mandate that it's released?

FOIA has a number of things exceptions, material subject to it's exceptions is
not required to be released, including:

\---[quote]---

 _Exemption 1_ : Information that is classified to protect national security.

 _Exemption 2_ : Information related solely to the internal personnel rules
and practices of an agency.

 _Exemption 3_ : Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another
federal law.

 _Exemption 4_ : Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is
confidential or privileged.

 _Exemption 5_ : Privileged communications within or between agencies,
including those protected by the:

1\. Deliberative Process Privilege (provided the records were created less
than 25 years before the date on which they were requested)

2\. Attorney-Work Product Privilege

3\. Attorney-Client Privilege

 _Exemption 6_ : Information that, if disclosed, would invade another
individual's personal privacy.

 _Exemption 7_ : Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that:

7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings

7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial
adjudication

7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy

7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential
source

7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement
investigations or prosecutions, or would disclose guidelines for law
enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably
be expected to risk circumvention of the law

7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of
any individual

 _Exemption 8_ : Information that concerns the supervision of financial
institutions.

 _Exemption 9_ : Geological information on wells.

\---[quote from:
[https://www.foia.gov/faq.html](https://www.foia.gov/faq.html) ]---

The sensitive things at issue probably fall into the existing exemptions (a
lot in #3), otherwise business rules could be disclosed under FOIA now, even
if the code wasn't the government’s to disclose.

~~~
efreak
> Exemption 9: Geological information on wells.

That one at the end seems interesting. I wonder how that got added in there as
such a specific item and not as part of a broader category of sensitive
information...I would think if wells were sensitive information, then so would
mineral deposits and other natural resources, possibly falling under either
exemption 3 or 4:

> Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another
> federal law.

> Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is
> confidential or privileged.

------
ArtDev
The former administration agreed and made efforts in this direction including
publishing code on Drupal.org:
[https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse](https://www.drupal.org/u/whitehouse)

On a sidenote, apparently the new administration scrapped it for a brochure
Wordpress site. Funny discussion here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousego...](https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/7kw7eu/whitehousegov_is_now_on_wordpress/)

------
jeffalyanak
The Government of Canada has some decent policies on that. The Directive on
Management of Information Technology stipulates that government agencies must:

* Favour open source solutions * Favour non-prorietary solutions * Release source for custom-built solutions under open source licenses through Government of Canada sites

See C.2.3.8 for the relevant clauses: [https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-
eng.aspx?id=15249](https://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15249)

------
lifeisstillgood
I have been banging on about this for years - please see
[http://oss4gov.org/manifesto](http://oss4gov.org/manifesto)

It's hard to make headway with the chicken and egg problem - if there was a
good OSS system for a government need, the government could be persuaded to
use it - but you can't write one without the initial investment which you
cannot get because VC won't fund it ...

------
austincheney
As a government employee and software developer I think this is completely the
wrong argument. Before we get that argument we should convince the government
to not be afraid of writing software. In all but a few edge cases the
government doesn't want employees writing software for a number of unfounded
irrational reasons. Many areas of the government, especially the military, are
still afraid of using any open source software.

------
fghtr
It should also concern scientific software. Right now many research groups
close their software written using the tax-payers money. Some even try to sell
it.

------
kuwze
Actually companies throw fits when the government contributes to open-source,
especially when it comes to lucrative defense related stuff [0].

[0]: [https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-
bigtable/](https://www.wired.com/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-google-bigtable/)

~~~
sdinsn
That case is not at all related, please read more carefully:

> the committee questions whether Accumulo runs afoul of a government policy
> that prevents federal agencies from building their own software when they
> have access to commercial alternatives

The law exists to prevent wasting time & money, it has nothing to do with
being open source.

------
newnewpdro
I'm in favor of the transparency this would confer, but it's probably not in
our best national interests to be potentially giving away state of the art
software for running large governments.

The code is of minimal utility to individual citizens who have no need to run
large governments, but can be hugely beneficial to our competing nations.

~~~
c22
Psst, it's not our state of the art software that's holding this ball of mud
together.

~~~
newnewpdro
It's a competition nonetheless.

~~~
c22
Is it? What would it look like to win this competition? To lose?

------
tvararu
This is principle 10 in the UK Government design principles.
[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-
principles#mak...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-
principles#make-things-open-it-makes-things-better)

------
hndamien
In addition, publicly funded surveillance cameras in public places should
produce publicly available data.

------
devinjflick
Yeah! NSA fork over those hacking tools!

~~~
tombert
In a bit of fairness to the NSA (never thought I'd say that), they _did_ give
us SELinux, which I think was overall a net good.

~~~
precurse
Is it though? In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend
disabling it since it can cause random issues. i.e. The Percona XtraDB install
guide.

I find that it's way too complicated of a layer that most people can't/won't
learn. Compare this to the OpenBSD pledge and unveil which doesn't get in the
way, and there's no way to disable them.

If you make something overly complicated, with the ability to disable it all
too easily, then it won't get used.

~~~
bubblethink
>In most installation guides I've dealt with they recommend disabling it

That is generally bad advice then. selinux is used by Android and Fedora (and
hence RHEL & CentOS). selinux can break things, but it is quite stable these
days at least for the distro supported packages. The downside is that anything
outside the distro packages will likely have no support or will run
unconfined. OpenBSD unveil is still new and will face similar challenges in
that it will cover the base system well, but for ports, it will be up to the
port maintainer to implement it.

------
snambi
Totally makes sense. Why would tax payers fund a project, which will be used
for profit of privileged few?

------
cs02rm0
In the UK it seems like a pain to get anything open sourced.

AIUI, by default everything is Crown Copyright.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#United_Kingdom)

------
daveheq
Wrong; our military, CIA, and FBI are all funded by public money; should they
all be open too? No. There's plenty of software that's publicly funded that
should not be open source, and much of that wouldn't make sense anyway as it's
proprietary.

------
MR4D
According to this line of reasoning, all the code for our nuclear weapons
systems should be open source.

Beware the law of unintended consequences - it’ll bite you!

(For the record, I agree with the sentiment, but it’s hard to implement
without causing undesirable effects.)

------
bluetwo
OK. If you believe this to be true, you need to elect leaders that make this a
priority.

If it's not an issue, make it one.

If no one cares to support the issue, find someone to run on it.

If you can't find someone to run on the issue, you've got to run yourself.

~~~
baroffoos
What a useless suggestion. The current political setup does not allow electing
people based on issues as granular as this. No politicians will make promises
about this because only a small population understands why it is important.

Also you know how useless attempting to run yourself is. You will never get
anywhere which is good because just having one good idea doesn't make you
qualified to lead.

The best thing to do is to start public debate among people who understand the
issue and attempt to get those in charge to join in.

------
bovermyer
The positive and optimistic side of this is well-documented.

The darker side is that making all publicly-funded software public would also
mean making all weapons software public. That could have disastrous
consequences.

~~~
moosey
Perhaps we could just stop making weapons software? I mean, someone needs to
go first.

When I look at wars throughout the world, a huge number of them are fought
with US weapons, and we don't actually have a good track record of supporting
peaceful people. I don't think that we'll get there until we stop dumping
weapons on the world for profit.

------
CaliforniaKarl
Alot of the conversation I have seen so far has been US-centric. That's fair,
given that this was posted during US business hours, but for the US I don't
really think this discussion applies as much.

Works created by the United States Government are not covered by copyright in
the US, effectively making them public domain _in the US_. See
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105)

"But—", you say, "—the code the NSA is publishing has a license attached!"
Indeed, that confused me too, until I found the answer at
[https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm...](https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#_Toc505089933):

>…copyright exclusion for works of the U.S. Government is not intended to have
any impact on protection of these works abroad (S. REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong.,
2d Sess. 56 (1976)). Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in
other countries depending on the treatment of government works by the national
copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is sometimes asserted by
U.S. Government agencies outside the United States.

So, Public Domain within the US, and Copywritten (but OSS-licensed) outside of
the US.

My understanding is that copyright in EU countries is much more complicated.
For example, apparently the view of the Eiffel Tower at night is copyrighted.
See
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM)

As for anything Classified in the US, there are laws controlling distribution.
So, take something GPL-licensed: If you take, use, and modify the software,
you are not required to provide the code unless you distribute the product to
others.

See the question "Since U.S. Government works are not protected by copyright
in the U.S., are all U.S. Government works publicly available without
restriction in the U.S.?" from
[https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm...](https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.html#315)
(it's pretty long, and has a _lot_ of references, so I'm not reproducing it
here)

Of course, you may argue that, if a hacking tool is pushed to a remote system,
and that hacking tool was made using GPL-licensed code, then the source should
be distributed with the hacking tool. Also, note I said GPL, _not_ AGPL. For
both of those cases, I don't know if the laws governing Classified material
trump those governing Copyright (I'd bet they do), and what International law
has to say.

~~~
thayne
But what about software that is funded by the government, but not directly
created by government agencies, such as software that is the result of
government research grants (at universities or private research institutions)
or contracts with private companies?

And does that law also apply to works created by state and municipal
governments?

------
kemitchell
If software is publicly funded, it should go into the public domain.

~~~
tracker1
Where do you draw the line between publicly funded and publicly licensed?

------
kesor
Shouldn't this include all the code written but publicly traded companies as
well? I mean, it is mostly funded by people's pensions - why not open source
that!

------
ashelmire
Same for healthcare, engineering tech, pharmaceuticals, etc.

------
atoav
The combat slogan for this is: public money, public code!

------
mensetmanusman
Consider the Feds tried doing this with IP post WW2 and the results were
disasterous. Turns out govt. employees aren’t allowed to be paid enough to
make 100 hour work weeks reasonble - the level of effort required to get some
ideas off the ground.

Once the Bayh-dole act was passed to allow citizens to take ownership of IP
related to publicly funded endeavors, only then did the public start
benefiting.

~~~
saltcured
I came here and searched for the Bayh-Dole Act and am surprised to find only
this single mention of it. It really does seem to me to be at the root of the
current policies around federally funded research artifacts.

I disagree with the causation you infer regarding public benefits as a result
of this change in IP rules. After all, we saw many post WW2 benefits of
federal spending long before 1980. The most visible were in aerospace
developments that gave us the jet age, but of course even Silicon Valley was
well on its way in the 1970s with lots of computer industry groundwork already
in place.

I think a lot of the computer industry developments of the 1980-1990s were
almost inevitable once that stage was set. It was mostly a coincidence that
Bayh-Dole was passed and universities ramped up their strip-mining of the
federal budget around the same period. An awful lot of the current Internet
age was built by people like me, working on open source projects and federal
funding in spite of Bayh-Dole, not because of it.

------
ausjke
Let's look at this from a global view, one country's funded software may not
be forced to be shared by other countries unless they paid their dues? As code
in the public domain is for the whole earth these days.

Yes nations do compete. The whole one-government funded software should be
published to internet is _false_, in a technical sense.

------
a_w
I have always thought that all of the BBC's code should be open source.

------
known
I also propose all end-of-life software should be open sourced

------
exabrial
Would it be possible to FOIA the source code and commit history?

~~~
dragonwriter
Disclosability and licensing are _almost_ orthogonal (though a proprietary
license might make code more likely to be nondisclosable.) Particularly, open
source code could still fall into most of the existing FOIA exceptions.

------
xiaodai
MS office to Libreoffice will be a disaster. I used excel professionally and
tried libre. Omg, nothing worked. Loading large didnt work, doing pivot table
didn't work. People need to start using R, libre will be really bad

------
fithisux
I am 100% with this logic.

------
maerF0x0
Also of concern is a tragedy of commons like issue where those who contributed
no funding are able to get the software for free. For example if a piece of
city focused software is FOSS and then a bunch of other cities choose to
consume it but not contribute to the funding or code.

~~~
arthurjj
Agreed the other cities are being a jerk but not exactly a tragedy of the
commons [1] as OSS is not a rival good [2]. One city using the software does
not prevent others from using it.

[1]
[https://market.subwiki.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://market.subwiki.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)
[2]
[https://market.subwiki.org/wiki/Rival_good](https://market.subwiki.org/wiki/Rival_good)

~~~
scj
I think it's closer to a fireworks show. Another set of eyes doesn't impact
the purchaser's viewing.

------
rb808
The other point that there are millions of boring crud apps written out there
in govt/contractor land. We dont need to see these as open source, its not as
if there are lots of devs that love fixing crappy crud apps in their spare
time.

~~~
c22
Your argument against is that we might get bored reading the open source code?

~~~
YetAnotherNick
While it is bad way to put it, but GP comments does make a little sense. All I
can think of government software is CRUD apps or research projects. The source
of later is released on case by case basis(tor, selinux on one hand, exploits
such as stuxnet on the other) and any ruling won't help much there.

~~~
c22
But why shouldn't CRUD apps be open sourced? Is the assertion that they stand
to reap no benefit because no one will contribute to them? I don't think I
agree with this position. Nor do I feel that contributions are the only
forseeable benefit of open source software.

------
uberman
Would this not imply that if "my" government funded some software that "your"
government would be free to take it? I'm not sure I'm keen on subsidizing
"your" government all that much.

What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the
people of/under "my" government?

~~~
tracker1
So, if _YOUR_ government uses Linux, but doesn't participate in Linux
development, it's bad for everyone else? Most Linux users aren't contributing
to Linux itself. And likely less than half are making any significant
contribution to Open Source Software at all. It's still useful software, and I
still appreciate everyone that does work on it.

~~~
uberman
You seem to be conflating my position on the use of public funds with your
position on open source in general.

 _" So, if YOUR government uses Linux, but doesn't participate in Linux
development, it's bad for everyone else?"_

I'm not sure where you are going with this. I certainly never claimed that
governments should not use open source software. By all means I hope (for
argument sake let's call it The US) leverages Linux where practical.

What I disagree with is the premise that The US or their contractors owe pull
requests or public repos to the peoples of the world just because the US
taxpayer partly or fully funded a development project. Hate on me if you must
but I believe that no US funded research results be they in software or any
other IP are or should be automatically owed to the peoples of the earth.

 _" Most Linux users aren't contributing to Linux itself. And likely less than
half are making any significant contribution to Open Source Software at all.
It's still useful software, and I still appreciate everyone that does work on
it."_

Yes, I agree with your idea that most open source users are _freeloading_ in
the sense that they contribute far less than they use. That is part of my
point.

~~~
tracker1
Users who don't contribute back, aren't removing what you have done, or a
given government may have funded. Some governments _ARE_ contributing to open-
source... other governments using open-source doesn't undo or degrade things.

We are not in a communist/socialist world where every community must pay at
the point of a gun for things they don't choose to pay for. And if some
government wants to force users of software they develop to contribute to
funding, then there licensing should probably be something to reflect that.
But then it wouldn't strictly be OSI/Open-Source.

~~~
uberman
I am baffled by your post.

 _" We are not in a communist/socialist world"_

This is EXACTLY my point. We are (at least I am) not. My government does not
owe me or anyone else (let alone a foreign government) open source access to
it's IP. To think otherwise (as you appear to do) is to be the socialist.

I hate to break it to you, but open source IP _is_ socialism. I hope that does
not come as some sort of shock to you.

Again to be very clear __I am a fan of open source projects __. I use them, I
contribute to them. However, I choose how and what I use and contribute. My
government does not choose for me or worse mandate via some policy that I
must.

If you feel that The US government should require you to open source your in-
house CnC software to the people of the DPRK because The US gave you a
business development grant of $10k then you sir are the communist, not I.

~~~
tracker1
I was using an analogy to express a point that because one organization
chooses to fund opensource, the fact that another doesn't isn't expressly
taking away anything.

That aside, I do feel most of what is publicly funded via tax dollars taken by
threat of force should be open. This includes data and software (other than
expressly licensed, commercial off the shelf software). I'm not as hardline as
some on this, but I do feel that way.

The Communist POV would be that all software, data and access be restricted
and expressly owned by the government and not really the people.

Open-Source is socialism if the government is forcing people to pay for it...
so long as its' a collective voluntary thing not enforced by the government it
is in fact not communism/socialism but a part of marginalizing that software
which is not a core business component.

The point I was making is the government shouldn't be choosing for me...
however, given that the government does fund software development for its' own
needs, that development should probably be open.

For the CnC example, I've stated in other threads that I don't feel commercial
software should be required to be opened if it exists and is licensed via govt
contract vs. developed for.

