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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.
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.
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.
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 (=
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.
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.
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...!
"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.