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Should Public Funds Mean Public Code?
Lisa points to this article on oreillynet with "two opposing viewpoints on whether all software created by publicly funded research should be licensed as open source, and the chance to weigh in yourself." Open-source software (under whatever license) seems to me like a good way to multiply the investment of tax dollars that public funding relies on, but the counterarguments offered here are interesting.
As large corporations rarely pay their fair share of taxes, why should they benefit from public money? As your humble os sofware writer pays his/her share then they SHOULD benefit. And so should the public at large.
Publicly funded research should all either be public domain or BSD style, definatly NOT GPL, since that ends up in the same duplication of work. Anything GPL has to be duplicated at least once to get it as something BSD/PD so that everyone can use it.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Why do our public dollars fund private efforts?
I have never understood why we give tons of money to companies/universities/etc only to see the ideas patented or something else, and not released to the general public for use. If you were paid by the public, let the public have the benefits.
What if we paid Company X to build a bridge on private lands with public money, to only be used by the person who owns the private land. It just doesn't seem right.
I hate the idea that a large company goes into a University and "donates" some equipment but to use it the school must sign away the rights to work done on the equipment.
So you have Billons public $$ going to support the infrastructure of the university and then with a small( think million $$ ) donation some company reaping potentially huge rewards.
But not necessarily public domain. The BSD model seems to have done quite well.
And this should extend to not only code, but any research. How can Univ. of XYZ get a government grant, and then have the university, the prof, or the private company who pitched in some spending money get ALL of the rights to the results of the project?
Kind of a dumb question to ask around these parts.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Hello, I think it would be very interesting to make an FOIA request for the source code to some small insignifigant government application. The source code is produced via public funds and belongs to the people just like any other government document. Anyone ever tried this?
Douglas Calvert
Having attended a public university (go bruins), I find the idea of universities profiting from publicly funded research offensive. From my personal experience, I know there were enough politicians within the UC system. Let's nip this thing now rather than encourage more professional politicians to be drawn to our centers of higher learning by the profit motive.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
The argument that much of what is currently being developed is closed is a strawman. There will always be this argument, but the longer we wait, the more time it will take to change when the time actually comes. It would be better to change now, absorb the bump, and continue. (And given the pressure, many of the closed source systems could become open source (IE, pay $X to Joe Roberts so that he will change his code from propietary to GPL, etc.)
Fellowship 9/11
If a project was entirely funded by public funds, then the intellectual property rights for that project belong the the public and that project should be in the public domain.
It should not be open source, whether GPL, BSD, Artistic License, whatever! My tax dollars should not go to push your opensource political agenda. The source code should be made part of the final progress report for the project, and I should be able to modify it to my hearts content (funded by non-government resources) without even thinking about releasing the source to my modifications. In the same way, if you want to setup a foundation that warehouses public projects, makes modifications to the code and relicenses it under an open source license more power to you.
I've been working in the government funded software research and development community for a decade and I must have seen as much as $50 million or more of the Public's dollars go into the giant black hole of software research.
One of the major problems of goverment funded research, even when it is contractually bound to be open for government-related inspection and use (which most of it is) is that the various players all jealously guard their turf. This includes other contractors who, even when legitimately approached for copies of the source which they are contractually bound to give you, curiously develop problems getting messages, getting back to you, shipping you source, and providing you access. You'd think it would end there, but no.
The government players themselves jealously guard their turf. Since there is similar and even duplicative work funded across DoD and government, government reps have no desire at all to share. They view the other similar projects as competitive and worry that if one of them gets the upper hand, their own project will be unfunded as redundant or irrelevant. This creates a situation where the government players -- those who are supposed to be working for the Public Trust -- instead drag their feet and use passive resistance in giving up software to even those who are allowed to see it, such as other members of goverment or government contractors working on the government's behalf.
The end result of all of this is that enormous sums of software gets locked up in boxes and never sees the light of day. About the only person who actively looks at the source is the original contractor. For research efforts, its understandable and reasonable that a research project doesn't result in a piece of software that's used by either no one or the very few. However, what's not not reasonable is that the information itself is effectively vaporized.
This is a completely execrable situation and grossly violates the Public Trust. Not only is the system vastly wasteful of the public dollar, it likewise violates the entire basis of public research: the open sharing of information.
For some time now, a sort of jewel in my mind's eye has been glimmering, and it goes like this:
All goverment software development, with the exception of sensitive projects, should be forced into placement under open license into a high profile source repostory such as Source Forge. This, for every government project, would be the primary CVS repository of the project. Project developers would insert code here and be subject to detailed public scrutiny with default anonymous CVS read access.
In my opinion this would blow open the doors of enormous amounts of software development and be of enormous benefit to the general public. Consider how neatly nipped in the bud all the beaureacratic foot-dragging would be. Intermediaries? None. You want the source code? CLICK.
This should be the new standard of non-classified government software development. The money belongs to the People, dammit! So should the research.
C//
How about a different angle on the same idea: Suppose you gave public funding for research on Fusion Reactors, and a breakthrough resulted in a working design. Would you demand that you be given your own Fusion Reactor because you contributed funding?
Demanding the knowledge (designs, algorithms, theories) gained from the research is a different story, because generating knowledge is the main purpose for doing research. Contributing funding for research is an investment, not in tangible goods, but in knowledge. Not sharing this with the contributors would be cheating, but refusing to hand over source code is no more wrong than refusing to hand over a Fusion Reactor.
I don't know about PBS for copyright information, but in general, any pictures, images, or film taken by State or Federal employees are public domain. There are certain limitations on this- for example, classified information, or the use of military insignia, but the overwhelming majority of the material put out is free for you to use. So yes, you could use it as source material in your own movies, though common decency demands you give credit where it's due.
This picture is a classic example. It was one of the most stunning photos to come out of the montana forest fires- the low resolution of the picture above doesn't do it justice- and any AP photographer would have killed to have the rights to it. But the picture was taken by an on-duty USGS employee, and hence, everyone gets to use it.
So in several cases, yes, publically funded stuff is in the public domain.
I think it all should be, but that would doubtless deprive my University of some much needed cash that the state will never give us.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The theory with open source is that the everyone can look over it, find bugs, fix bugs, submit fixes, and the world is a happier place...
Imagine this in place in a system where the government uses/makes opensource software.
Mind you I am for this... but imagine
1) Make good application
2) Make code public
3) Person A. finds bug, reports it
4) Person B. finds a way to fix it
5) Gvnt thinks its a good idea to look over the fix first
6) rootkit released
7) (5-6 months later patch is accepted)...
Seeing as most college professors are more interested in getting grants than in actually teaching students, I propose a simple solution:
If you want a grant, your results become open source. No, don't steal from "closed source," come up with your own stuff, and it has to be open source, or you're not getting any money.
If you plan on making money off of your research, you're not getting a grant. The public should not be forced to pay for your profit, no matter what "societal benefits" your getting rich may provide.
~ now you know
Fact is, private are should not be subsidized by the government, period. And because PBS receives funding from the government, it is not "free" to perform the most noble function of a free press - to criticize the government. Logic can dictate only one of two answers; either 1) All work done at taxpayer's expense should be freely available to the people that payed for it, or 2) No work unrelated to the fundamental necessary functions of government should be paid for by the taxpayers. Personally, I prefer the latter.
My doctoral work was funded partially by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council - a British Government funding body) and partially by SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (Now GSK). This is not unusual in British Universities, and I guess the same holds for American Universities.
If my code was to be released, would I have to work out which parts were publically funded, and which were not?
The University's IP lawyers have obviously thought about this in the past. There is a clear contract stating ownership details.
As it happens, the more useful parts of the code I developed are now released under the GPL.
but I don't seem to get to take one of those out for a spin anytime I want.
Oh, that's military, you say, that doesn't count.
How about the money I pay for roads, schools, Amtrak -- I don't get to do whatever I want with those.
You don't have any choice in paying your taxes. Using money forcibly expropriated* by the government for such activities violates the rights of those who earned the money in the first place.
* The governemnt ultimately uses force -- by putting you in jail or shooting at you if you resist -- if you don't pay your taxes.
This takes a few paragraphs to become relevant, so stay with me...
Recently, I've been involved with submission of an SBIR (Small Business Inovation Research) proposal, in which the Gov. gives small companies money to do research - the idea being to help create innovation - the big boys (companies over 500? people) are not elligible to get the funding.
Beauty. The interesting part is that companies who get the funding get rights to any patents as a result of the research, with the proviso that the Gov. gets to use the technology royalty free.
And as Lessig has pointed out, patents were also originally intended to help spur innovation, by giving the inventor and incentive to invent.
Also, seems to me like a lot of people end up sitting on patents - they never intend to produce the thing. I'm not sure how much of a wacked out conspiracy theory it is, but I've heard urban legends of the oil companies buying patents/rights to energy saving devices, never intending to make the device. Regardless of the truth, you can see the logic.
Back to the SBIR: So the good part is the Gov. gets rights to the results of the public money. Yea. And the underdog business gets a foot in the door. Yea.
But what if nothing is done with the patent? Or the rights are sold to one of the big boys, for a sort of denial of service attack in the patent world.
I think the patent should be reverted to the public domain (no royalties for anyone) if steps to develop the product/idea have not been taken within 1 year (in addition to the other current patent time restrictions).
Relevancy:
Why not apply the same thing to software? Gov agency's get the code for free, to diminish inter-agency rivalry. And if a private company/person/etc developed the code under a Gov. contract, they get patent style rights to it - a few years of proprietary code, which must eventually be released to the public. And if there is no active development on a commerical product (keep in mind a product aimed at being sold back to the government probably counts), then the time to release into the public domain is even sooner.
The question is a real nobrainer to answer.
If there is an issue of which license to use, thenit should be such a license that in the public paid for state it is usable in both GPL
and proprietary manners. But the code sate as paid for by the public remains public in that state.
Should it be altered and the GPL applied to the altered state, then the altered state onward is under the GPL. But should it be altered under proprietary control, then that version/fork remains proprietary so long as the holder of the alterations wants it to be.
Public spending so to benefit both individuals and business, for both of these things are want makes up the society for which public money (taxes) is collected and used.
It really is a no brainer for anyone but those looking for a free ride.
Not too long ago we had another story on these lines and I posted my opinion. When I reached the first argument raised by dalke against public code my repost was straight to fingers so here I am.
Prove it! Especially from a public funded university venture! As always money can buy money (advertising buys income) but generating real revenue from software is extremely tricky (.bomb). If he specified an exact license and copy-protection scheme he may have had an argument, but only if his product has a unique quality that is quite globally beneficial within a field. In case I need explain my argument here, he should have tried to get away with I want to experiment with a modification to the algorithm used for working with databases of the secondary structure of proteins (if thats what it is, he never said) and DSSP is the only database/tool used then he could have an argument, but ONLY if you accept that non-free Open Source is as good as Free software. Yep, it most certainly does! The result of the work would be a public built and understood system (however long it takes) which can be used by anyone, anywhere and they can offer their work back into it. Take his Secondary Proteins. Could the algorithm not be examined as an entity instead of as a piece of DSSP? Could you not objectify it out? Could that work be used by others to start building a free replacement? Could he just have written it for a hypothetical system and ported out the information he needed to fill the gaps from DSSP for any demo/testing (as the first Free compiler must have been compiled by a non-free compiler unless they were madThis is the nub of the argument, I say that public money should not be used to buy private money but used to fund the social purpose of learning, dalke says if it could make money it should be allowed. This is a truly american atitude (not to say it does not exist elsewhere, but it is an american creation) in that while most other societies would have seen the choice as public or private, now a choice for surrupticiously funding your economy by subsidising private ventures is quite acceptable, why? Allowing the university to sell itself is fine, but allowing it to fund what it sells with public money AND stop people from distributing it serves purely capitalistic purposes and not the greater good (and if you want to believe that capitalism is more important than greater good thats your bag not mine).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The primary reason for this was to allow the researchers a chance to examine the data, write reports and so forth, essentially, get a return on the huge investment in time and resources each institution has to make to "buy" time on telescopes. Essentially, it keeps the motivation for those researchers. Importantly, as the data IS publicly funded, it does find its way into the public domain, as it should.
Perhaps a similar approach could be used here?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Even ``morphological'' studies are no longer done with magnifying glasses and film, but rather with large collections of digital images from spacecraft such as SOHO and TRACE. Image calibration and reduction software is mandatory if one is to do meaningful experimental analysis.
Fortunately, the solar community has by-and-large been good about releasing analysis tools into the public domain -- in fact, there's a homebrew distribution system that grew up, mostly before CVS, to nearly-universal status within the research community. Without the tools that are available via solarsoft, I literally could not do the work that I do without developing similar things myself (in fact, I do develop tools myself, and publish them... but that's another story)
Even within the relatively open solar community, there are software-based barriers to entry. For example, most of the current community develops in a proprietary language called IDL, which was developed in significant part (in its early years) with public funds. The developer, David Stern, started RSI, inc. to capitalize on his language. Currently, IDL licenses start at $1,000 per year, double the current cost of an entry-level workstation.
When workstations cost $10,000 and only large organizations could afford hardware capable of doing image processing, this cost was excusable. But now, in an era of cheap computers, high connectivity, and readily available space-borne solar data, the cost of supporting IDL is the main barrier preventing hobbyists, high school students, and interested amateurs from doing their own research programs. If IDL were open-source and free, RSI might well still exist (under the Cygnus / Red-Hat business model), and solar (and other) research would be much more accessible to the masses.
One may argue that IDL (and its competing product, MatLab) wouldn't have developed into the large, powerful packages that they are without commercialization. But such arguments are spurious: PDL, the Perl Data Language, is entirely open-source and free, and powerful enough that that I am now devloping tools in it instead of in IDL.
I signed the petition, and I encourage you to, too. Publicly funded intellectual property is your property, just as the national forests are your forests. Demand them.
I can't agree with your statement on software obviosuly being pirated more if games shipped with source.
.0001% of game buyers willing to go through the bother of compiling a whole game certainly wouldn't hurt sales. Worried about someone compiling and releasing a binary of the game elsewhere? I though we already covered under piracy that anyone who wants one can get a copy of the ORIGINAL game, tested and virus-free (probably, of course it is Warez....).
Think of it this way - take your statement that there is "massive piracy" today. I'd agree, and in fact agree so wholeheartedly that I have to ask you: If someone wants a pirated copy of a game today, can they not get one easily? In fact the only way it would be easier to pirate games is if they shipped to your door on AOL CD's. Thus, how could ppiracy increase by releasing source?
Next consider a company releasing source for a product on thier website, but selling binaries and disallowing anyone else to distribute binaries. How would that hurt sales? The
Of course where a company might loose out is that other companies would download and use the engine without paying them for it. On ther other hand, it might lead to a larger community around your product, and also get a few more people into game programming which is good for industry as a whole. I'll bet a lot of people have benefitted from the release of Quake and Quake II code to the public at large.
ID probably has the perfect balance between OS and a commercial company that can still make money on engines.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This subject has been heavily debated already for well over 2 decades. Why not check it out the web?