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President's Tech Advisors Comment On OSS
Tony Stanco writes: "The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee's "Recommendations of the Panel on Open Source Software For High End Computing" has issued its
report and recommendations concerning OSS/Free Software. " Very postive -- says that the government should help develop more free software/open source software.
Wow, what an exciting moment. A govt. committee is thinking that...."An analysis of Open Source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for Open Source software development.
So, there are some promising things that may come out of the report."
This is fantastic news! All of this, from a committee that is......"Defining a policy framework for accomplishing these goals". A govt. committee that is analysing and in the very process of defining a policy. Why, everyone in a US govt. agency must be paying attention to this committee!
This is terribly exciting, and we must all pop out the champagne.
Whew, now that I'm calmer, I'm wondering if there are thousands of these committees formulating policy decisions.
As for the govt. "investing heavily in open source", I think that's how TCP/IP came about, along with practically everything that constitutes the Internet infrastructure, though they didn't have the GNU/free/open-source labels flying around. After all, the US govt. doesn't invest in proprietary MS or Sun research projects.
w/m
I think they mean standards for work contracted to themself. I don't think they're about to regulate hobbyist programmers. Then again, if they consider programming to be dangerous, they might. After all, you need a license to fly a model plane. Then again, that's directly physically dangerous, so I doubt we need to fear licensing now.
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I think companies would be more likely to use an MPL-style license than GPL. Under the MPL, they can keep some parts of their product closed, while letting other parts be developed by the community. It's really perfect for them. And it obviously works, too. Look how many contributors Mozilla has.
We'll just have to see what kind of product they end up with.
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Ugggh. I hate software patents as much as the next person, but your idea has a few holes in it.
Letting "free software" violate the notion of software patents is impossible without trashing patent law altogether. Say I patent a software design for "half-click shopping". As part of my patent application, I'm required to provide enough detail so that one reasonably skilled in the art of software development can implement a half-click shopping software package (essentially open sourcing the idea while retaining the rights). When I'm granted the patent, I'm given a 17-20 year monopoly to prevent others from implementing half-click shopping software. Meanwhile, I lay waste to the industry, putting Amazon out of business by licensing the patent rights to Barnes and Noble and others. Fame, fortune and derision follow.
If your proposed law was enacted, Apache could decide that what this world really needs is halfclick.apache.org, the Open Source Half-Click Project. There are all these mom-n-pop storefronts out there on the web who can't compete and license my patent (or afford my companies license fees for the software), so we'll just build them a free version that they can run to circumvent my government-granted monopoly. Since there's no charge for it, even my normal customer base (B&N) could go hire a few developers to contribute to this open source project and tailor a version for their needs. No money changes hands, but I clearly lose the one right I'm granted with the patent, which is the ability to decide who can use the patent.
A more direct approach would be to fix software patents in the first place, and not drag open source into it. A cheaper, more streamlined way of resolving disputes without involving lawyers is the key step.
That's not to say that open source doesn't have a role to play in regards to software patents. As the half-click shopping originator, I might find it useful to grant Apache a license to my patent, because innovations that arise from their work might themselves be patentable, and that only adds to the value of my patent (since derivative patents ultimately require licensing the original patent).
IMHO, open source may become a very valuable weapon if combined with a streamlined arbitration approach to resolving the quagmire of software patent lawsuits. Open source the creation and registration of prior art, instead of the implementation of existing ideas. It's been discussed before, but it supports the ideals of the open source community as well, if not better, than free code. For example, we create an open "shadow PTO" that open source contributors can submit patentable ideas to in order to stake out ground we want to protect from the lawyers. By patentable idea, I mean a proposal that has enough detail that someone reasonably skilled in the art can construct it, and something that is novel. That would be a much better way of using the open source culture to thwart software patent abuses, and it would still protect the valuable aspects of patent law. A battle of the minds.
Instead of condemning the article which others have done here quite thoroughly, for the better, I'd like to step aside a second and wonder about the potentially good side effects of this report:
Then again, this is probably just asking for more laws to be made, which may not be so good, either.
I'm not a lawyer, or very familiar with how these things might work, so is there anyone who is that might comment?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
GPL doesn't stop people from making money off other people's IP. It just stops from legally selling a closed source version. RedHat makes money selling GPL software written by other people. So does CheapBytes. You probably understand this already. In practice, stopping people from selling closed-source fruits of OSS labor seems to be enough.
However, I still think the BSD-style license is most likely to be favored by corporations.
BSD doesn't have the viral aspect to it. So, they can take BSD code, develop it, and then release the source or not. That "or not" is a nice option for corporations to have.
Witness MacOSX, the various BSD-based devices, etc. Compare to the Linux-based devices, where half the time people end up screaming "GPL violation" because the company wanted to make customizations and keep them closed. Want to bet they would have used BSD in those cases had they understood the BSD vs. GPL issue?
I think BSD is the license that will be favored in the corporate world. At least until the "we must protect our intellectual property" mindset really goes away. GPL is just ahead of its time. :)
Or more specifically, the US government built what we now know as the original internet infrastructure. No one company would have built as open a system - profit is in proprietary approaches according to conventional wisdom.
Seems like taxpayer funding for projects that acheive a greater good already has precedent in the area of technology.
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Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
The article seemed a bit hysterical in tone, given the actual content of the report. Goal 3 isn't "agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement", but rather includes "the use of common licenses should be encouraged". There's a huge difference.
I think we can all agree that using common licenses is generally good. Specifically, it's good when our license is compatible with someone else's license, since then we can share/merge code etc. The government encouraging this behaviour isn't to be feared. Horrors! The fed wants us to be good neighbors! Oh wait, that's the point of OSS, isn't it...
Also, the committee may not have RMS as a member, but it does have ESR, one of the other big TLAs. Why didn't ESR share this upcoming review with the OSS community? Who knows. Perhaps we should ask him. As to why the report didn't mention him, well, perhaps because it's not about the history of OSS? Sure, RMS will continue to have influence, but he's definitely not important in the scheme of a fedgov strategy. They're talking about ideas, not specifics. People are specifics.
The committee included people from many different places, such as Michael Tiemann from Redhat, Tim O'Reilly from, well, O'Reilly... people from NCSA, Microsoft, Collab.net, NASA, DOE, the EU (international concerns, international committee, if only somewhat), LANL, SGI, NSA, Intel, IBM, MITRE, NSF, and many other great acronyms.
So the committee surely isn't omitting any great group, except perhaps "the common man", if such exists in OSS. And many of the names are recognizable even to me, and I've only been interested in OSS for a couple years, and hardly involved. "All the usual suspects", as the article says. No fears here.
All in all, the report looks like a Good Thing for the OSS community, on the whole.
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As evident by the article, the flamefest is already beginning. All the government has done is agree that OSS could be a good thing to put to use. Rather than applaud them for taking such a step, the article blasts them for how they came to their conclusions. Huh? What? The committee has ruled positively for OSS. What's the problem? Let's take a look at some of the critique the author had.
1. How does a report to the President on Free/Open software development not even mention Richard Stallman?
What the hell does that matter? Are the conclusions somehow invalid because the committee did not tout the accomplishments of RMS? This committee does not care about the holy wars that have been fought to get free software where it is today. They're looking at how viable the *software* and *methodology* of free/open software is a solution to goverment needs. So is free software about free software or just about RMS getting his props?
2. This raises another question: who knew in the community that this committee was working on the report?
Again, I fail to see the relevancy. If anything, the fact that this committee of "people who have the same old, corporate, command and control hierarchichal mindset" came to this conclusion without any influence from the free software community is a testament to the quality of free software. Oh, but they didn't invite RMS to be on the committee, nor did they make his favorite teas available to him (remember that article?) so their findings are invalid. Please spare me.
3. Did anyone notice recommendation No. 3. the ultimate goal of which is "agreeing upon a single, common licensing agreement"?
Why yes, I did notice. My god this is ridiculous. They haven't even *done* anything yet and the author is basically screaming "GPL VIOLATION!" already. Understand my friend that this a government we're talking about here. This is not XYZ company that is worried about losing some IP which would affect its bottomline. This is a goverment with very real NATIONAL SECURITY issues to deal with. I am certainly not saying that the law does not apply to them nor that they are exempt from license agreements. An observant reader who is not too busy crying fowl like the author of this article, will see recommendation No. 3. in a different way. The government knows that while they may be able to get away with quietly violation the GPL (and other free-ish licenses) for awhile, eventually they will be caught in the act and shit will hit the fan. So No. 3. is an importmant hurdle to get over and the committee would not have been doing its job if they had not mentioned it. Who knows what kind of license it will be. They might even decide on the GPL because let's face it, the government is not going to release the source to anything critical. I dont believe we're ever going to see nor would I want to see nuclear_launch_system-1.0 on freshmeat. Ever. Not in a million years. Say all the bad things you want about security through obscurity, but some things are best left secret and locked up in a vault behind 100 men (or woman!) trained to kill you with their bare hands.
Mr. Stanco is jumping the gun a bit. If you are a true believer in free software then applaud the government for taking this first step. Instead of being critical of mistakes they haven't even made yet, offer ideas on how they can make free software work for them.
Yeah, the article is broken. It's got the wrong URL on the link to the PDF.
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I don't see any indication of regulation in the report. None at all. What are you talking about?
"I'm just wondering if it's possible too big a risk to take?" How can doing contract work for another customer possible screw things up? Horrors, I've just agreed to a contract that requires me to license that particular work under *insert license here*... oh wait, sounds like a usual contract job.
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If GPLv3 requires internally used software to be released, then people who don't like that will just continue using GPLv2. Perhaps they'll make a modification to it, stating that future versions of the GPL cannot be used to relicense it.
But basically, if people don't like the new license, they won't use it, assuming they're not sheep. Perhaps that assumption is a bad one, but I'll stick with it until I see good evidence to the contrary.
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Geez, this is straight out of the People's Third Communist.
Freedom means I don't have to explain to you why it is I chose to keep somethings private, and others public.
No, the GPL increases the amount of code that is freely available - this has nothing to do with the inherent value of freedom itself. Its nice that we can download GPL'd source code, but we're not entitled to it.
The BSD license provides an small increase in short term freedom by sacrificing long term freedom
What long term freedom is being sacrificed?
Let me spell it out for you: Developers choose to publish code under the GPL (in part) because they are self interested.
Read that again.
Let me explain. If I wrote some cool software on my own time, and I released it as BSD, and some corporation used it and improved it and then released it as closed source with an expensive license, then I wouldn't get to use those improvements. Since I'm self interested, I don't want that to happen. So I use the GPL instead.
The GPL says "I'll share my code... but if you use it, you have to share too." So if you don't want to share, go away. Write your own code.
The only people who complain about the GPL resticting their freedom is people who want the freedom to freeload.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
They do not have to hand out the source code just because it is in the public domain.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. We know what that means.
Mostly nice meaningless words, the Open Source equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. Yep. We're all for it. But consider the one genuine proposed government action, and the other possible action that they did not propose.
The people who brought me Clipper, Carnivore, DMCA, mandatory library filters, and all the rest now propose to tell me what copyright terms I should put on my personal donation to society. Riiight. Will they eliminate the First Amendment to accomplish this goal? I doubt it. But why did they propose this step.
The real and powerful proposal that they did not make was:
Require that in all electronic data exchange to or from the Federal government at least one acceptable format shall be an open format, without patent, copyright, or other restrictions on its use.
This phrasing would permit things like PDF, since the format is open. It is Adobe's PDF generating software that is closed.
This phrasing would prohibit the present practice of requiring exclusively MS Word formats, or other closed formats. These would only be permitted if there was also an open format available as an alternative.
Then let the government stand back and let the public decide.
Are you sure?
I attended a lecture by RMS in July at H2K and he specifically stated that he has absolutely no problem with companies and organizations taking GPL source, modifying it for internal use only, and not releasing the changes.
RMS is probably the most mis-quoted person next to Jesus Himself in the history of this planet -- (and yes, I'm doing the same, I know...)
1. The German government is helping to fund some important Open Source projects.
2. The USG's involved in Open Source already [For example, the Beowulf Project came out of NASA.]
3. You always have the source.
4. Stupid laws will come anyway- but I'd rather see more Beowulfish stuff than Windows-based ships being towed back to port.
5. My guess is that the single license would be applied to Government-funded projects. All in all, as long as they chose a BSD-style license it wouldn't matter one bit.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
If the GPL is so bad, and the BSD license is the best, then why had BSD forked so often while Linux hasn't? Do you think this might possibly be why Linux has gotten so much press coverage compared to BSD? And do you think this might be why BSD fanatics are so snobbish?
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Infuriate left and right
If they licensed it under a BSD license, obviously they don't *want* any say in the matter.
It's an interesting solution to the entire Intellectual Property debate- BSD license advocates simply write software to write software without any pre-supposed downstream use issues.
The GPL creates software as politics, proprietary licenses create software as property, and BSD licenses create software as software.
For some things I think the GPL is a good thing on the whole, but to say that BSD-style licenses created a need for the GPL is silly. If everything where BSD-licensed, you'd have the same situation as if everything were GPL'd- it's the proprietary licenses that make the difference in either equation.
I find myself in agreement with DJB on something- we'd all be much better off without any software licenses at all.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
Yes, this particular freedom was once known as "privacy".
Orwell would have loved the GPL - you increase freedom by decreasing freedom. Its lovely doublespeak.
Privacy has nothing to do with it. If you want to keep it private, don't distribute it at all (or keep it internal to your organization -- RMS has made it clear that he doesn't consider that "distribution"). The GPL simply says that if you want to modify it and distribute the result, you have to play by the same rules as the original author.
Increasing freedom by decreasing freedom in some specific cases isn't doublespeak, and isn't inherently sinister. For example, the law increases your effective freedom by taking away someone else's freedom to kill you, or take away your property by force, or some such. "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" is not considered a particularly dangerous arrogation of power.
But I can't imagine that Government contracts are silent on the issue. Government contracts are not silent about very much; they are regulated by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs), which address issues like this in numbing detail. And in every contract I have worked on, all the IP products of the contract go into the public domain. This is not generally due to some clause in the text of the contract, but because the FARs are included by reference in the contract.
So what is specifically different about software contracts?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I don't think the report is particularly close to the ESR take. They
talk about the need to coordinate requistions with academic reserach,
which is not a point that I recall ESR making: not an issue to most
businesses.
That's the cover letter being quoted, not the report.
Unfortunately, the cover letter wasn't subject to the same review process that the report was.
Because it can! - freedom is good - this is why there is a BSD that is far more secure than any linux distro, and a BSD that is far better performing on x86 than any linux distro.
Do you think this might possibly be why Linux has gotten so much press coverage compared to BSD?
What the hell does that have to with anything? Stick with the issue - the GPL decreases freedom. If the government is looking at open source licenses and measuring the value of freedom implied by each license, there is no comparison - the BSD license is simply more free.
I feel particularly strong about this with regards to government - the United States was built on the premise that people are free to choose - be it faith, affiliation, and political beliefs, even if those choices piss you off. You see, in this country you are allowed to be self-interested - although there are many countries that apply the RMS ideals to every day living. I think North Korea is still accepting visa applications, although you had better hurry, they are fading fast.
So? Put a clause in your licenses that says if the software you created is used commercially they need to come talk to you.
Personally if I write a piece of software, and I want to give it away to others, I'll use the BSD license. If someone else takes it and goes off and does something new with it without releasing the source?
So what... If their changes are that signifigant well maybe they deserve to profit from it. If they are not, then someone can just modify my existing source with similar changes and release it for free.
Why get so bent out of shape? They can't take away what I've already given away for free.
I think the GPL is about bitterness.
From the article:
The report makes three recommendations:
1. The Federal government should aggressively (!) encourage the development of Open Source software for high end computing;
Nowhere in the actual report does it use the word "agressively", and it potentially overstates the committee's enthusiasm; the actual quote from the report is;
2. A "level playing field" must be created within the government procurement process to facilitate Open Source development;
There was no "must", but this was the least distorted point made:
And, the biggest bone of contention...
3. An analysis of Open Source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for Open Source software development.
Which is flatly untrue. The actual report does not use the word "single" anywhere, so everyone worrying that the Feds are going to relicense your GPLed (or BSDed stuff) can chill out and have a salad or something.
No "single licensing agreement" is recommended for the Feds. Someone will write out a plan akin to "You may want to use the BSD license for these kinds of projects, and the GPL for these kinds of projects."
In other words, the government will spend a good deal of money and effort to avoid possible licensing conflicts in procured software. That can only be a good thing, in my book.
Jay (=
If you asked RMS to help you with a panel on Open Source he'd go off on a tirade about how he doesn't support Open Source; he supports Free Software.
Actually if he was involved, I suspect most of the other panelists would eventually go out into the hallway and start beating their heads against the concrete walls hoping that it would just all go away.
Until recently I was involved in a number of multinational efforts on the part of the U.S. government to get the countries in central europe to cooperate and share information between their ministries of defense for crisis response etc.
...
Most nations were long on talent and short on cash. They knew what they wanted but ultimately could not afford a Sun, Oracle or Micro$oft technical solution.
Rather than pushing a U.S. technical solution, it seems the best role for the U.S. could simply be to facilitate an open source effort among the countries to develop the software needed. At the conclusion of the effort, the nations would all have access to the source, free to modify to meet national requirements but with (at least initially) the technical interoperability needed to effectively share information amongst the group. I considered proposing it at the time but feared that it would be shot down because it did not fall within the more traditional programs that have been established for foreign aid.
It may not be suprising that the U.S. gives millions to other nations with the caveat that the money go back to U.S. contractors but it would be difficult to get 500K to support an open source software initiative
I have strongly come to believe that the GPL is the worst license for any entity that expects to use software freely to use. The GPL (and RMS) is becoming a Borg-like in the way it is trying to usurp the intentions of authors of Open Source software everywhere by forcing them to assimilated. The quickest thing that will cool the government's ardor for Open Source software will be all the innumerable license incompatibilities caused by the GPL.
Gosh, who is going to protect us from the big bad RMS with his big bad GPL? What a crock of shit.
Authors decide on a license that is right for them, and as an author, you can release your software under as many licenses as you see fit. So the question is, how is RMS usurping anything? How can he possibly assimilate anyone? If you don't like his license, don't use it. Make your contributions to BSD licensed software, use BSD licensed software, and move along your merry way. Just don't bitch when some author releases his software under a license you don't like. The choice of licenses is his.
Fact of the matter is, authors don't care how free Carnage4Life thinks their software is; they use a license that fits their vision for the software.
(+5, Insightful) This user doesn't feel confident that his opinion stands on its own and thus needs to end his posts by suggesting he would only be moderated down because his views are unpopular to the /. horde.
This sig is false.
But from my understanding, the GPL is what has prevented RedHat, Caldera and the like from forking Linux and thus giving us yet more Unix splinters instead of a uniform architecture that is currently on around 24% of the world's servers and rising.
The GPL doesn't prevent forking; it just doesn't provide any incentive to do so, since you can't keep enhancements private.
Anyone who thinks GPLed code is immune to forking should consider XEmacs vs. GNU Emacs and the recently-remerged gcc vs. egcs.
Jay (=
the correct link to the report is http://www.ccic.gov/ac/pitac_ltr_sep11. html. Not to bash tony for getting his article up infront of everybody but the link in the article on /. doesn't goe where it implies it will go.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I work quite a bit with Government procurement but not related to software, so maybe someone with experience in this area can help me out.
When we write reports, analyses, or anything else paid for by the US Government, it goes directly into the public domain (obviously I'm talking about unclassified material). Does source code for software comissioned by the Government not go into the public domain? If not, why not?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
Only the GPL and BSD licenses are mentioned in the text of the report, though it does not explicitly exclude others.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I can't look at all companies, but other companies I've seen that release their source usually have similar provisions, that bug fixes must be sent back in. If you think about it, most companies are much more willing to release their source if they can guarentee it's "protected" from being stolen by competitors. That's why the GPL is really important. It provides an easy-to-use license which companies are (more) willing to use than BSD style licenses. It's also a "well known" license that people are willing to trust.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
$DEITY on a pogo stick, you GPL fanatics are dumb as dirt.
The GPL-using author says, "I want my software to be free, I want all derivatives to be free, I want to increase the amount of free software in the world."
This is a noble goal, and the GPL serves it well.
The BSDL-using author says, "I want to write a definitive baseline implementation of something -- I want nobody to have any reason to reinvent this particular wheel."
This is a noble goal, and the BSDL serves it well.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
This is a little off-topic, but perhaps a good place to introduce the idea.
Most of us dislike software patents. They are intended to encourage innovation, but we feel that, at least with the sort of patents that are presently being granted in our field, that the practice is doing far more to stifle it.
The best thing would be if software patents were eradicated, but in light of the government's endorsement of open source software, maybe we can push through a more moderate proposal.
What I would like to see is an exemption on patents for free (or open source, if you like) software. This means that if the software you produce is non-commercial in nature (by some standard) then you can employ any patented software technique or device without obtaining permission from the patent holders. This would encourage innovation on the part of the authors without posing a threat to the patent holders' government-granted monopoly, since open software is not a commercial competitor in itself. Indeed, because it increases the possibilities to write applications which interoperate with commercial ones, it might stimulate commercial software efforts by providing an environment where greater integration is possible.
Most importantly, it gives non-commercial projects a greater degree of freedom. They can use the best techniques available to build their software exactly when the software is made available to the largest number of people, people who will benefit from good software.
Conversely, of course, you could regard this as a restriction on existing patents: a software patent no longer prevents other people from using the the patented technique/feature, but rather only commercial competitors.
Doubtless there are aspects to this which I haven't thought through, but doesn't this sound like a worthwhile and relatively appealing compromise? If the political climate improves a bit more, maybe something along these lines could be lobbied into legislation.
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
The report from PITAC's letter on Open Source Software makes three recommendations
First, the Federal government should aggressively encourage the development of open source software for high end computing. Adopting this recommendation will require a technical assessment of the software needs for high end computing as well as an innovative management plan and funding model for supporting this development.
This is the way it should always have been. Scientific endeavour has always been a group effort with advancements being made from the pool of common knowledge. It has always amazed me that large complex systems have therefore not been Open Sourced by default. In my opinion it is OK for rinky dink little programs to close their source especially since they can be written by anyone of capability (Instant Messengers, MP3 players, etc) but large complex systems (Operating Systems, large-scale distributed applications, etc) should be Open Sourced so that they can be subject to peer review and also so that they can add to the general body of knowledge instead of forcing us to constantly reinvent the wheel solving problems that have already been repeatedly solved.
I especially feel that code written with the benefit of my tax dollars should be Open Sourced so myself and others can have access to the fruits of our labor. After all, government funded research projects are open.
Second, a "level playing field" must be created within the government procurement process to facilitate open source development.
Too true, currently government requirements computer systems are usually exact specifications that can only be filled by closed source software. A loosening of the specificity in the specifications would be a boon to the adoption of Open Source software in government.
Third, an analysis of open source licensing agreements is needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for open source software applications.
Again I have to be in agreement. After reading the recent spate of articles on who is not in compliance with the GPL(NASM, Phython, and until recently KDE) even though their projects are Open Source, I have strongly come to believe that the GPL is the worst license for any entity that expects to use software freely to use. The GPL (and RMS) is becoming a Borg-like in the way it is trying to usurp the intentions of authors of Open Source software everywhere by forcing them to assimilated. The quickest thing that will cool the government's ardor for Open Source software will be all the innumerable license incompatibilities caused by the GPL.
In my opinion, a BSD style license is the best license for governments, corporations, researchers and students. Users of BSD software can contribute to a common pool of knowledge and yet can modify the software without releasing changes when they see fit. This is true freedom. This is especially true when one realizes that Bruce Perens and RMS are currently in the process of updating the GPL so that even internally distributed software may count as software being distributed and hence should be Opened (this is from reading Bruce's comments from the past few weeks, if I have misinterpreted them, I apologize). I frankly do not believe that any entity, be it government, corporate or individual should release internally sensitive pieces of code simply to satisfy some pseudo-communistic ideal for software sharing.
If I give away software, it is with no strings attached because I want to improve the pool of general knowledge and share with my users, not to force the entire world into some college professors myopic view of what the world should be.
These are my opinions
Reading the article, they also don't appear to be talking about things you might use every day, but more researc software. Stuff like distributed computing, etc.
:(
Actualy most of the report is pretty much fluff regurgitated from Raymond's writings.
From pg 8 item 2:
I think this indicates that there will be an effort to push vendors towards developing software that can be modified and redistributed. If the government pays the research bills, why should they need their code to be proprietary?
"That the Presidential committee doesn't include RMS as a member puts the whole report under a dark cloud, in my opinion."
:-)
Why should they have RMS on the committee. I can see good reason for interviewing him about it. Of course I think he'd first note that Open Source is not the same as Free Software and toss in "GNU" in there somewhere
Yet I can't see why he should be on the committee. There's lots of people who could serve on it and I'm sure do well. I'd be somewhat wary about advisory committees made up of people whom are directly involved advocating what is being reviewed.
this whole thing makes me somewhat uncomfortable from the get-go
sure on the surface the report looks like a good thing at first glance, but it really seems to imply regulation of OSS, which is simply the oposite of what OSS is about
no I'm not implying that individual projects are not regulated by the people involved, but when a bigger body steps in, things sometimes go bad, and if the government steps in, what's going to happen?
I'm not saying the government WILL screw this up, I'm just wondering if it's possibly too big a risk to take?