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.

Comments

FOIA and government source code

[dfelznic]

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?

Government Software Research Black Hole

[Courageous]

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//

Re:code is no different

[dfenstrate]

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.

Perhaps we are forgetting how Bureaucracy works

[Lostman]

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)...

The solution is simple.

[Uttles]

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.

A federally-funded researcher's point of view

[Dr. Zowie]

I study the Sun under grants from NASA, through the Southwest Research Institute. Plasma physics in the solar corona is complex enough to require sophisticated numerical methods to understand them, and numerical methods are crucial to current research and theory.

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.