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Should The Government Go Open Source?
The Village Voice is running a story about New York City's troubles with the vendor who built the subway Metrocard system - magnetic swipe cards that work so well, I almost got arrested once because the system was... deficient. Though the story is about a specific situation, the general problem (municipalities becoming captive to corporations with specialized expertise) is extremely common. (And governments spend a fortune on such contracts.) The author-recommended solution is that the municipalities develop communal, reusable systems. I can imagine plenty of systems that would benefit - start with the air traffic control system. Is this the future of government-developed code? Or will it continue to be one-off, hideously expensive, closed code?
OSS isn't the issue here. NYC Transit has problems wihth the Metrocard because it bought into a custom system that it alone uses and that was developed by a company which (judging by the VV article) seems to be trying to equal Scientology for corrupt practices.
Transit should have bought an existing system, not one consisting solely of vapour. A good choice would be the one currently used in Japan -- although I admit to having no knowledge of its technical details, the system does seem to be uniform countrywide. It works well, is flexible enough for multisystem tickets, is fully automated (except for intercity reserved seats, which shouldn't be difficult to automate), and should be cheaper than implementing an entirely new system.
Of course, the US is infamous for NIH syndrome. It adopted GSM fairly late in the game (albeit earlier than Japan, which won't do so at all), and even then not as a countrywide universal standard. Then there's the Acela fiasco, where Bombardier was selected as the trainset supplier despite it having zero experience building anything capable of > 250 km/h operation -- and, according to their website, the top speed of the Acela trainset is only 240. Pathetic, to put it mildly. The current-generation trainsets used for ICE and Nozomi service have a maximum speed of 280 km/h.
At least we don't have John Howard or Jack Straw.
Nobody said it was anyone's right.
However, any significant reduction in the barrier-to-entry is generally a business consideration made when considering the value of opening internally developed and used software.
I never said this was a Good Thing, just that it's how decisions get made.
How is open-source air-traffic control software going to get tested?
The exact same way closed-source ATC software gets tested.
Just because the source is available doesn't mean that anyone outside the usual development team gets their changes accepted. What it DOES mean (the important part) is that if some other company can offer a better deal on the development while still keeping the gov't satisfied to the quality of their work, they can take the ATC software and (hopefully) the simulation environment used for testing and work on them themselves.
It's not like this is something Joe Programmer would be working on in SourceForge; rather, it's an effective means of preventing vendor lock-in.
Btw, I honestly think "(-1 Dumb)" or anything of the sort should get you a "(-1 Asked For It)".
Maintainance costs are seldom if ever cheaper when you go in-house.
Depends. If it'd be an entirely custom job and you already have folks in-house capable of doing it, I'd expect in-house to be cheaper.
Huh?
If SomeCorp(tm) contracts me to write a piece of software for them, and I do it, and they pay me, and we don't make it reeeally clear otherwise, it's a work for hire, and they own it, and I don't have any legal rights to it, and they can take the source and turn around and give it away or have someone else maintain it or whatever else.
That's the law. It's always been like that, open source or no. Unless your company agrees otherwise outright (and they usually do), they don't have any rights to the software anyhow.
I'm not sure that releasing ATC source will expose bugs. I mean, I wouldn't be reading it, not usually.
:)
Maybe if I were writing a game I might borrow a significant amount of exist code and debug it via that route... but that's about the only situation in which I, Random Joe Developer, would be messing with the thing. Remember that the article talks about funding these projects, open though they may be. It's not a hobbyist thing in this context.
Finally... even if the city owns the source and can bring it to a different vender, opening the source still helps in reducing lock-in -- if for no other reason than that it encourages alternate developers to get involved by giving them an easier way to look at the existing system; one of their developers can DL the code on a whim, without getting any suits involved, take a look at it and then take it upstairs. Furthermore, those relatively few developers who *do* look at the source for whatever reason (such as the aforementioned game example) benefit the sw's owner by increasing the number of people available for hire with knowledge of the codebase.
And finally... (with the exception of national-security-related sw) why the fsck not? With a company, there's a worry that releasing internal software will reduce competitors' cost to enter their market. I don't think anyone's going to worry too much about that when preparing to start a new government.
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Maintainance costs are seldom if ever cheaper when you go in-house.
Obviously there is a lot of in-house developed and maintained software, and that's generally because it is specific to the way you do business and the excess cost can therefore be jstified.
I don't know where you came up with that baloney.
The Defense Department mandates that any software built for them has to also include the source code so that they can do whatever they want to it.
:)
They also mandate you write it in Ada...
Nobody suggested that "we" would be writing the code from scratch. The suggestion is that the existing code be opened up to our hundreds of thousands of eyeballs so that it can benefit from our feedback.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The arguement was since one agency is co-funding so many projects that it require the projects use a common software base and then the vendors build their hardware to support the software. The advantage would be no longer would NYC / LA / Boston / Chicago / SF / Etc. all keep reinventing the wheel nor paying vendors to reinvent (or resell) the wheel but rather one wheel be defined and used (with local variations) as needed.
The plusses are obvious: Municipal transit systems could cut their software costs. A larger common pool of code would distribute development & debugging costs. Hardware could become standardized. Bidding would become easier as systems would be more similar. Features developed for one municipality would become easily availiable to all, in return they would be reviewed & debugged, possibly being extended in turn.
Of course there are negatives too: Asking some some sort of board to come up with standards...
This could also lead to less-well built systems. While the core system may be standardized it'll have to interact with legacy systems for up to another 30 or 40 years in some cases. Those will all be unique or semi-unique ones and of course building bridges to them will have to be done locally.
Furthermore any common code base will have to be flexible enough to support the myriad local pecularities across the systems. It need not directly include support for these specific features but it'll require the hooks & robustness to accomodate them.
Finally this all reflects the competing free-market/governments-standards issues in the US. Presumably by letting various vendors freely compete they'll come out with better products faster & cheaper then any centrally organized government-run body could. That is official US doctrine.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Well, that's why I'd like to see some gov't funding for it. You aren't going to attract the Rastermans (Rastermen?) of the world to work on it - but it would be in the govt's best interest to pay people to develop it, and retain the rights to the source code...
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"almost" arrested is like "almost" pregnant.
Michael, you didn't share some important details.
What really happened?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
> there are about 25 people in our group capable of learning how to administer an NT box in a reasonable amount of time, there are about 4 or 5 available who have a reasonable background in *nix.
No, you had 25 people who could follow wizards, set file permissions, and maybe know how to invoke the registry editor to change a key mentioned in a book they come across. It's a start, but it doesnt make them qualified admins. NT administration is still tricky hard work that requires a lot of specialized knowledge no matter what the four-color glossy literature tells you. I find NT administration to be even *more* of a challenge at times, when I lack tools out of the box like truss to show me what files a program is opening (great way to notice things like "aha, it's looking at this old config file that should have been deleted"). I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it still requires specialized knowledge and troubleshooting skills. You get those people out of enterprise environments, where you're *far* more likely to find an equal representation of unix admins as well.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Apart from systems which are arguably for national defense, any software developped for or by the government is open source.
Its your tax dollars that were spent. The Freedom of Information Act here and other laws in other countries, clearly state that what's your's is yours That includes the software that controls the operation of any device.
If specific software was developped for specific devices that are bought by public funds, the source code to that software is also part of the purchase. That implies absolutely no warrantees on the part of the vendor. There are no contractual obligations on the part of either party inferred by the availability of the software.
Its simply a question of getting what you have paid for.
Before you think M$ has to turn over their code... They don't sell their software. And its not written to specification to actually control specific devices in the hands of the government.
New York City and the MTA are screwed because they're morons who got into a shady deal (there's probably some corruption story in there somewhere,) and walked in a field full of bear traps with eyes wide shut. And the strap-hangers are bent over and greased up. [I'm one of them!]
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
>The Village Voice is running a story about New York City's troubles with the vendor who built the subway Metrocard system - magnetic swipe cards that work so well, I almost got arrested once because the system was... deficient.
I looked at this story, read the above, and then realised how silly it was.
Think about it....
If you open-sourced something like the that then you'd open up the market for black-market/fake Metrocards, which would cost the Govenrment lots more in the long term than a few glitches with a contractor.
Face facts. Open Source isn't the be all and end all, and isn't ideal in the Real World.
On a side note, isn't Mandrake funded by Macmillan? They are in the perfect position to sell software to schools. With the recent release of OpenOffice they could profide a complete office automation system for schools. This would also be a good way for students to learn some real computer skills instead of how bad systems behave irrationally and the magic three fingered salute.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
http://www.openclassroom.org
...
The site will look sorta familiar
.
Given enough aircraft, all runways are shallow.
But the idea that you can never sue someone for making open-source software is nonsense. The ability to sue comes not from the closed source, but from the contract one has with the authors. In the case of an open source ATC system, one would hire a company to write it and maintain it with appropriate penalty clauses in the contract just as you would with closed source -- the difference would be that if, ten years later, the company that was maintaining it turns incompetent or goes bankrupt, you can take the code to someone else and contract *them* to maintain it; and, of course, like all open-source software, you get the benefit of peer review from all over. Just make the company with the maintenance contract responsible for reviewing the patches submitted before accepting them, and there you go.
;)
Imagine the benefit you would gain from a few dozen air traffic controllers hacking on the code they depend on every day in their spare time, with professional programmers working under bloodthirsty contract standing by to filter out their mistakes. It's a veritable Open Source Utopia.
I'm a consultant working for a company which, for various reasons, always supplies source code to the client. It is the nature of the product we use, but it isn't considered an issue at all.
On the other hand, if it was closed source, well that wouldn't be a significant issue either. You get what you pay for, closed binary, or sourcecode. It's called business. *I* don't like to see a company in the positition where they are stuck having to call me in. I'd much rather they call me in because they like my work, and the company I work for, rather than because they feel like they are stuck between a rock and a hardplace.
But this article isn't about that.
This article was about how the city bought 1500+ machines, and only used 1000. Uhm. Guys, Thats NOT that unusual. No mention is made of how many of the remaining machines are scheduled to be installed. Nor how many will be kept as spares. (Lets see, install 250 over the next 2 months, leave 250 as quick replacements for defective/vandalized machines...)
Doesn't really seem so unreasonable.
The article discusses some of the issues with code changes, updates.
These are NOT to be taken lightly. Its a complex system, it should have some form of control process in place and takes time. Some changes could take 2 minutes if you had access to the source code... it could also take 12 months to clean up the mess if you fuck up. It happens.
I'm not saying this system wasn't more expensive that it should have been. I'm not saying the company was as responsive as they should be. I am saying that there is nothing special about the company, or the situation. (note: many companies will not honour waranties if you modify their code... why? because you may have screwed it up. Not their problem. Its yours.).
(Screw with my code and I might get upset too, especialy if it is an ongoing project.).
How much of a system like this should be open source? Well, how many such systems exist? Almost NONE. the Development of such a system is expensive. Even if the city decided to do it themselves it would cost them a lot of money to develop the software, and the hardware. Someone has to build it, and, most of it is one-of. 1500 machines? For that you don't get great deals on parts. 10,000 card readers and you might start getting deals...
The entire attitude in the article is offensive. (speak-and-spell interface). What would you prefer, mouse driven??
I haven't been to New York, so I haven't used their metrocard system. On the other hand Vancouver B.C. has ticket dispensers for their ALRT system. An idiot could use them... oh wait... thats the idea. Anybody can use them.
This article expresess multiple, conflicting, political opinions. A cheap shot at replacing people at ticket counters with machines, and a push to opensource it. Open source isn't a cure-all.
I remember one cow that would disagree. I believe he was in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Cheers,
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
What kind of crieterea is that for mission critical national security software? Lets take a poll and see how many people can use what!. What kind of collosal idiots are making decisions based on a popularity contest. Why not shoose the software that's going to work best, work fastest for the least amount of money and then train your people. Most government labs have insane turnover anyway for chrissake. More tax money spent down the drain.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
> Custom written software like that is one instance where you *can* sue the people who wrote it if it fails, and ...
It is very difficult to specify software to the degree of detail where you can actually sue someone. Specs change during development anyway.
Suing someone rarely does any good. The software vendors are experts at this - it is a core competency to negotiate contracts with plenty of holes in them that aren't apparent at the time.
And of course the PHB is breathing down your neck wanting to get started and can't understand why you are being so pedantic about the contract. The sales guy is telling him they are keen to go but 'you man' is holding things up.
The situation is not much better than trying to sue MSFT when powerpoint has a bug.
A good vendor will let you have source code. If not it is a good sign you are about to be done over. At a minimum you should have an escrow agreement so that they place the source at a trusted thrid party so it they go bust or - worse - get taken over by CA - you are not left twisting in the wind.
Finally it is no compensation to sue someone if your plane just crashed. (Airline safety briefing for busy people: If the plane crashes you will die).
Imagine trying to explain how to "hack" Metrocards by scratching out parts of it, using ascii pictures in some l33t 0d4y t3xt f1l3. heh.
What a nightmare.
I like the part about "locking down" part of the code to keep "geeks" from figuring out how to put cash on the card. Will people never learn that security through obscurity is no security at all? Make the mechanisms open and the encryption secure and everyone will be happy (although I suspect retrofitting NYC's Metrocard system to be truly secure would be an enormous undertaking).
It's outrageous that we should be in the thrall of a corrupt company like this. I feel that, in many ways, this sort of thing is a much more powerful argument for open source than any individual company's case history.
Just curious: how did you "nearly get arrested" because of Metrocard's deficiency?
How would open-sourcing software work for ATC? First of all, the majority of the problem is the hardware. Open-sourcing the software would not help that one bit! The US by far has the best ATC setup in the world, even with all of it's deficiencies. The FAA has long had plans to upgrade the systems, but those have been fought with budget overruns and slipping deadlines. In short, nothing's going to happen until the current system just stops working one day.
Also, how would your average OSS programmer contribute? In short, they wouldn't. I am a pilot, and I am no expert in ATC procedures and regulations even though I fly "in the system" several times per week. I also know many pilots who don't know a lick about how the internals of ATC work either. Don't get me wrong, we know how they work for us, but not all the behind-the-scenes stuff. Your average Joe programmer is going to know less and I just don't see how they can contribute greatly to improving a system that is broken is more ways than poor software.
I mean, really. Asking Slashdot whether it thinks governments should use open source code? Why don't we ask Microsoft employees if they'd like the DOJ case to be dropped? Or perhaps we should ask the Pope if he's a Catholic?
I worked for the Dept of Veterans Affairs about 5 years ago working on their FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) CD-ROMs. The VA released all the source code, except for the encryption routines, and would give it to anyone who paid the $5 fee for development and production of the CD (remember this was 1995). Presumably, other agencies that write code also have to release it through FOIA.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
Here's a plausable scenario: 1. Government adopts Free systems (they already use BSD on the most secure networks). 2. Government modifys and improves the implementations for their own use. 3. Government refuses to release new sources due to "natonal security". 4. Millions of users break BSD/GNU law. 5. No one who cares can do anything about it. As long as the Prez doesn't use SlackWare(...)
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Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
The link you gave didn't work for me. Do you have another?
:)
If they're really gonan put ATC on Win32, I'm gonna start riding the trains. Thats so incredibly ireesponsible I find it a touch hard to believe, but show me
how does this metrocard thing work again? I'm trying to swipe the card in my butt but it keeps getting stuck. Oh well time to go find my "open source" monkey. I can wipe my ass by sitting on it. Maybe then this metrocard thing will work
Take this personaility test.
Gov't really does it to itself. They can't do the projects internally because they can't justify the head count. These big projects are rare. And let's face it, cities aren't in the habit of laying off people.
So they sub-contract. Generally, they have to take the lowest bid. No one wants to end up on Dateline saying they spent an extra 11 million. This means we don't always get the best solution. Man, and if they try to import in a tested European or Asian system. The shit hit the fan, cause it's gott'a be made in the f*cking USA. Dispite the fact that most of the US's mass transit system is shit. (But I digress)
It's not uncommon to read about a city scraping an entire project and starting over again. We saw a lot of this in the late 80's when cities were big on hooking modems onto water meters, etc, etc.
This is not to say big business doesn't do this as well. I've seen plenty of business men take the aditude that they don't want to be a development house. We'll buy something off the shelf. If it doesn't work, we'll buy something else.
Government procedings occur, for the most part, under full public scrutiny. Why isn't it natural that the software should be as so, also?
Pax Digitalia
If Microslop spent as much money making a reliable, secure product as they spend on marketing, they might actually be able to produce software that DOSEN'T suck shit.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
As a frequent user of the metrocard system, I've got to give them some credit; it works pretty much flawlessly. Yes, sometimes cards don't swipe, but it usually works fine. And the vending machines are a dream come true; imagine one that accepts every dollar, no matter how crumpled.
As a side note, I'm curious as to what the vending machines are running. The PATH subway system, which connects NYC and NJ has similiar boxes which seem to run SCO (I saw one that had run into a problem at boot time; was kind of funny to see the control-D message in a subway station).
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The fact is, I've never bought into the two Big Ideas of the OS movement. I simply don't agree with the Stallman argument that software "ownership" is an Extremely Evil concept. (No, I don't want to get into that argument right now. That would be very Off-Topic.) Nor do I agree that the Bazaar is always going to produce better software than the Cathedral.
That being said, it's pretty clear to me that some projects absolutely must be open-source. For one thing, OS software methods do work better some of the time. The Cathedral has dicked around with GUIs for decades and given us the Xerox Star, Microsoft Windows, OpenWindows, and the ultimate in unprogrammable bloatware, CDE. The Open-Source community has been around for a few years, and has almost absent-mindedly given us KDE, GNOME, Englightenment (which I personally find esthetically appealing even though my brain isn't wired to use it), etc.
Even the closed-source Mac is an example of this. Even if you accept all the fancy usability design principles the Mac is based on (and I personally feel that the Mac is overrated in this respect -- benefiting from the absence of competing usability design principles) you have to admit that Apple is doing a lousy job of maintaining them.
A more important consideration is simple security. Bruce Schneier has convinced me that the only way to secure system software is to expose the source code. That enables the user community to verify security claims. The alternative is to rely on the untestable assertions of closed-source developers.
__________
The programs could still be audited and controlled as they are now but patches could be submitted after the initial release, increasing the speed at which bugs are fixed.
Working this way, air traffic control is a place where open source can work, and IMHO work well.
People may not be happy with using ATC which has been built by the open source community (esp if they've used Mozilla) but who could object to an extra few thousand people checking/fixing the code after release?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The FAA doesn't want to change the method by which they do the Air Traffic Control, to open source, or otherwise.
IBM had spent years developing and testing a system of computers aiding Air Traffic Controllers, in place of the handwritten system they use... The FAA put the kibosh on the project, sticking with paper and pencil.
I highly doubt that we'll see open source powering ATC systems in any near future. Open Source has its place, and could find a home in many Government run systems, but due to stick in the mud Administrations, it won't stand a chance in some quarters of the government.
Besides, think about it--- software for flight control must be as reliable as software for NASA-- no bugs. not one. not ever.
This is a wee bit different than the 'release early and often' philosophy.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
This is exactly the place for some overarching rules in favor of open source. Change is always expensive in the short run. And it is understandable if businesses chose to stick with NT for these reasons. But the whole point of having a government is to be able to include in the decision making processes inputs that markets tend to neglect.
The government is a large enough contractor to actually set standards of interoperability. And had it chosen to base these on open source, it would have benefited immensly the IT infrastructure of thu US and eventually brought productivity gains to the whole economy. Yes, there would have been an initial price to pay-- hiring a new unix sysadmin, for example, in your case. But frankly I cannot see a lot of better uses of my tax dollars than improving the sagging IT infrastacture.
That said, I don't agree that all or even most government software projects should be open sourced. This is a ideological rallying cry with little merit. But government units should not be able to make purchasing decisions in favor of "cheap" products that do not follow a much more stringent set of requirements, including:
use of open source infrastrucure if one exists.
( os, database engine, servers, etc.)
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I think the author of the parent has a point. There is a lack of responsibility with open source, the way we do it with GPL and such. I think there are possibilities for some open source solution, but I doubt the way "we" wrote Linux and such is a good model for mission critical software.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I think this is idea is interesting and would certainly be beneficial. I don't know how the public school system is charged for the software you mentioned (e.g., whether they pay a licensing fee by year or one site license for an unlimited time), so I cannot say whether or not this will actually save any money for existing schools.
However, there would be other big advantages to an open source records system for schools. The most obvious to me is that such software could be made to work on any number of operating systems and hardware models, so that the school need not be bound to a specific platform or company. Additionally, it would be possible to implement other features besides record keeping. (I think it would be beneficial if students could log in over the Web and check their current grades, so that grades on their report cards don't come as a surprise.)
In terms of open sourcing all government-used software, there are many other advantages to open sourcing selected applications, but everything should be done with moderation: while public school software is a great candidate for open sourcing, weapons control systems, as an off-the-top-of-my-head example, are not.
Just my two cents worth...
Nathaniel G H
Just because it is open source, doesn't mean it is written by the public, or just by anyone, it just means that people can view it. Perhaps a useful application of this would be if someone did have a suggestion to change it or found a flaw or potential flaw in the code, they could notify someone of it. Furthermore, the if the government is going to put large amounts of money in developing something like that, then they mine as well make it available, even if it is no more then letting people educate themeselves.
This reminds me of a survey that I once took regarding household appliances (supposedly 3rd party research): would you be willing to buy product-X which improves your life in so many ways and only costs $19.95 or are you so short-sighted and cheap that you won't even spend 2 hours wages on something this great? I mean, really, was that a question when he (Michael) answered it himself? Most of the time the /. editors try to be at least a *little* fair wrt closed-source software (note the mainly positive stuff said about BeOS). But this is over the top and arrogant. I for one sure as *hell* don't want open-source air traffic control software. How are you going to test it? Not at *my* airport!!! Custom written software like that is one instance where you *can* sue the people who wrote it if it fails, and you can be daggon sure that the people who do the grunt work are quite aware of that, and do a better job than most of the commercial crap that's out there. gah, next thing you know I'll be joining the ranks of people who claim /. is going downhill. I will admit that I remember with fondness the old Multia that used to run everything. That sucker got hot!! Well, I'm off to take my medicine.
proudly ignoring the preview button,
Um. I certainly never want to read in slashdot
"RHS releases patch for ATC crash bug in only 3 weeks!"
Guys, lets get "down to earth" if you will excuse the pun. Non life-critical sofwtare development is a very different beast from life-critical software development. There HAS to be a clear chain of responsability and a tightly controlled development process.
For the record, and to pre-empt comments, no one would DREAM of building an ATC system on a flaky OS like Win32 so that's a straw-man argument.
So Germany and France are both very close to either strongly preferring or requiring open source software for certain kinds of government implementations (or so we've heard). OTOH, i've read that most US federal agencies are strongly perferring COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software solutions with a minimum amount of integration and custom code written.
This is the challenge that open source actually solves fairly well and fairly directly: COTS products are preferred because government agencies (and most private organizations as well) have a proven inability to develop software (they just write crappy code, manage their projects poorly and usually never finish). Given this environment, they'd like to 'just buy' everything (My slogan is that although you can do almost anything, you can't "just" do anything--integration is tough and no amount of management ignoring it will change that).
On the other hand, we read stories like this (and this one if funny, but hardly unique) about governments getting srewed by the commercial software vendors they use.
Open source splits this right down the middle--you get competent people to develop your products but you get access to the source to make changes if you want. cool, eh? government agencies who are nervous about this kind of thing can take a middle ground of establishing reliance on open protocols and requiring commercial vendors to support them.
Should the government go open-source? In terms of software, yes. Maintenance costs are cheaper when you go in-house (most of the time) and these sorts of positions are somewhat immunized against graft. Hardware is another story: They should use straight standards, but this IS government we're talking about.
In reality, it won't happen. Closed software yields great fiscal rewards for corporate America. They can survive hell freezing over as long as they have that government contract.
I support the Gallic and Deutch moves towards an open source friendly government.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Working as I do at Teledyne Brown Engineering, I see some of the NASA software-development process second-hand. I know they outsource a lot of it--such as the Payload Data Library, which TBE runs for Marshall Space Flight Center. [I wonder if that link is visible by the bulk of /.ers...] NASA is progressing more to industry standards for things--maybe if open-source becomes industry standard, the Feds might follow suit.
There are, believe it or not, some things that won't benefit from being open source. Besides, the Feds will probably decide that some things will create more trouble than they're worth...
--
-- Geof F. Morris
Now, that being said, wherever possible we do get involved in Open Source computing whenever its realistic to do so from an overall perspective. Bruce Perens even came to our site to lecture on the topic (and it was great! Thanks Bruce!!) We recently migrated an important database application from HP/UX to NT, and we seriously considered hosting it on linux. In fact, our tests showed that the db (Sybase) was clearly faster on linux than NT, yet we chose NT. Why? Simple...there are about 25 people in our group capable of learning how to administer an NT box in a reasonable amount of time, there are about 4 or 5 available who have a reasonable background in *nix. It was purely a business tradeoff. As another example, we have many people looking into Beowulf clusters running linux, because that is the appropriate tool for the job.
SuperID
Hardly the oracle to discern the truth. They don't have a NYC bias or anything, ya think???
I bet Cubic has a few interesting tales about the folks in New York, as well.
I liked the part about NYC wanting "one modification" after the project has been planned -- and NYC is p-oed that Cubic has to cut shipment by 400 machines to stay under budget.
Modifications to fixed price contracts have to be paid for somehow. Should the company pay? Why?
Most contracts are written such that the buyer gets all specs, software, spares, etc. when the contract terminates.
So terminate it, NYC, get yourself another whipping boy. Force them to lowball you to get the contract, then ask for mods when they're tooling up for production.
Sheesh. This article is just typical NYC whining about their own frickin' mistakes. It would be comical if it wasn't so sad.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
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Open source does not mean that any code submitted gets added. I, for one, would be pleased to know that thousands of talented programmers around the world could review code responsible for the safety of so many travelers. Isn't this exactly what we're all demanding for Carnivore?
Develop a standard school administration file format (XML...) and some free applications that can run on top of it, for teacher's gradebooks, district records, management, & reporting, etc. Make it open source... heck, get [insert government entity] to pay for it's development.
Think of how much the school systems could save, if each district didn't have to pay millions for crappy on-off, outdated applications from houghton-mifflin or macmillan or whatever...
My wife used to teach highschool here in Texas. The systems they had for teacher's gradbooks (required, mind you) were horrendous. DOS-based, for starters, always breaking down ("submit 2 floppies, and 3 printouts, just in case"). A huge waste of time and money...
I'd love to see open source make headway in this area. I'd love to see some gov't money going to fund it...
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... is to do what the DoD does on most of it's coding contracts: require that the contractor make its source code available to the DoD. That is, the contract requires that the DoD has clear rights to use the code and have others work with it, but the contractor retains copyright control.
Honestly, for political as well as institutional reasons, I think this is the best way to go for quite awhile. All coding work (and all systems that have any sort of code, from EPROMs to Java) should have the stipulation that the gov't has a clear right to use and modify the source code with no additional compensation. Now, that doesn't mean that the gov't can sell the code or give it away under a OpenSource-style license, or even that they can reuse the code for another project (that should be negotiated in the contract, with appropriate compensation for the contractor). It simply means that the gov't can get others to fix problems with the code if need arises (big holes, the contractor refuses to finish the job, the contractor won't maintain the code, contractor goes out of business, etc....)
This strategy is kind of the minimum resistance path - it still protects closed-source vendors from having their code released to the public (and let's face it, you wouldn't ever see mass-market software (and its low price) make it into gov't use if the companies were required to give away the code to anyone). And it saves the security debate for another time (that is, the debate over Open vs. Closed software won't impact the decision to require source).
Personally, I'd like to see the government start requiring perpetual license for all code to be used internally in any way. They'll be a lot of resistance for this, but I think there's a much better chance of this happening than if the gov't tries to require a GPL/BSD/whatever code license for all work. If you do that, then the gov't loses all access to mass-market software, and it becomes a completely custom job.
On second thought, if it all requires custom programming, well, hey, Welfare For Programmers! <grin>
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Asking Slashdot if the government or anything else should be open source is a lot like asking a cow if we should be vegetarians.
Thats right. In cubic's infinite wisdom, they made metrocards as unforgable as possible by making the card themseves analog. This turns out to be really stupid, because the machines then have to expect slightly mangled data (after all, the cards stay in my wallet next to all my other credit cards.) So, if you scratch the right portion of the card, than you can stay under the machine's error threshhold while destroying the part of the card that holds the current price (Apperantly the original amount and the current amount are stored in different locations on the card).
Stupid MTA.
Well, that will show them for putting cops in every station to arrest me for truency after 3:00 and during the summer.
--Alex the very bitter Fishman