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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.
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
I agree with Mr. Dalke in that you can't just apply blanket policies like this. There are always going to be exceptions and fuzzy areas. To absolutely force all public-funded works to provide the source to their projects without considering special cases seems negligent at best.
Code is no different than any other property...
Are Television shows created with public funds available for my use as source material in my own movies?
Are works of art (like the infamous Mapelthorpe photos) considered in the 'public domain'?
I honestly don't know the answer, but I'm sure someone has thought about this in another domain. I wish people would stop thinking that code/cyberspace is really as new and challenging as it seems.
-db
Maybe a center position can be reached here. Let's face it, universities need funding, be it from government or the private sector. If a license was used that allowed non-commercial use of code, but forced a company to pay a fee for it's use in a commercial project, makes the most sense to me. The university benefits, due to selling it's software. Business benefits, due to getting great software for further development/exploitation. We benefit, because we get to use the same stuff for our projects. Cool, eh?
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
The author of the article opposing release of publicly funded works under an open source license seems to have a misconception as to what common free software licenses say constitutes source code. From the anti-OSS article:
Open source licenses rarely require that local changes be distributed. Open source licenses do not set a limit on the fees charged. Open source licenses set no restriction on when, how, or where the source is distributed (with minor exceptions). As an open source publisher I am free to release my source code only once a year, at a charge of $1 million paid at least two months in advance, and you have to accept it on paper tape while we are both standing under the Eiffel Tower. (I'll cover my own travel arrangements if you take me up on this.) If I am the original copyright holder I'm even allowed to obfuscate the code by removing comments, using nonsense variable names, and other tricks.
This conflicts with the most common definition of source code. The GNU General Public License, one of the most popular free software licenses, specifies the following in section 3: "Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange," that is, something other than paper tape. Also, "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it," meaning that if reasonable comments aid modification, leave them in.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Kind of like TurboTax, but for free. And if it's open-source, so much the better, you can cheat on your taxes and still blame it on the software :)
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//
I am a firm believer in the principles of Free Software as advocated by Richard Stallman. HOWEVER, if software is developed with public funds, it should be available for us to use as we wish. There should be no restrictions on anyone's use of that publicly funded code - it should be in the public domain.
:)
Proprietary software obviously restricts my use of what should be public domain code; I won't belabor this point. As GPL opponents so often point out, though, the GPL also restricts your actions, in that you can't hide your improvements (unless you keep them completely to yourself). The usual (and correct) rejoinder is that if you don't want to make your work available for free, then you probably shouldn't be taking advantage of others who do. The GPL is about guaranteeing that the choice available to you is available to everyone else. If government software is GPL'd, though, then no one has a choice. You've paid your taxes, you have moral ownership of the code*, but you can't legally do with it as you wish.
Let the software become public domain. Do you want to GPL your improvements? You are free to do so. Do you want to close off your improvements? You are free to do so. Will the GPL improvements code wipe the closed source improvements off the map? I believe so, but that's a rant for another day.
*P.S. Don't come back with any stupid analogies with physical property owned or developed with public funds - the analogy doesn't hold. I can't do anything I want with public lands - but I can sell pictures I take of public lands. That's the closest analogy between physical public property and publicly developed intellectual property.
P.P.S. Smart analogies are OK
Having worked in a research lab, I can tell you that who paid for what is often very, very unclear.
Consider a researcher has a research program that has been going for 20 years. He may have been funced at various times by: a) the university (often academic researchers start work on the university's dime), b) government grants, c) private foundation grants, d) his own money. His graduate students may have been supported by any of those various sources or independent scholarship sources. Perhaps a tuition-paying undergraduate contributed some code at some time also.
Just like research equipment, code also accumulates. It may have been traded from other research groups. It is a real mess. Figuring out who owns what can be more or less impossible unless you have a dedicated ground-up code block that is identifiable to a project that has no contributions from anything other than public funding. (Oops, you have a Hertz fellow write 2,000 lines of the 100,000 lines of code... now what?)
Odds are that there are already too many rules regarding the code. Adding another one is just going to bollix up an already intractable mess.
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)...
That way, it could benefit everyone. People could start their own closed-source companies with it, and thereby expand the economy. GPL projects could also arise out of public code, because there is nothing that says you can't take public domain code and start a GPL based project with it.
Most definitely, publicly funded code should remain public thereby keeping control of the code out of the hands of both greedy closed-source developers and of GPL based projects that force developers to release improvements. With public domain or BSD code, both groups could benefit.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
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
An important point that may have been missed:
:-). Oooh, I'm evil :-)
It's not the fact that the government is paying researchers to develop some wonderful thing that they then go off and own completely. The government always retains rights FOR GOVERNMENT PURPOSES -- usually to everything, including source code, design drawings, what have you.
Now, they can't just turn around, take the source code, and give it to the public, but they can re-use it for any government purpose. I believe they can even give it to another government contractor to do government things. It isn't as bleak as is made out.
An argument can also be made that exclusive commercial rights are used as an incentive to get more people to step up to the plate and bid on various research proposals. I work for a R&D shop that gets funds from the government, and while I suspect we would probably be fine if we had to give away code, we certainly try to make commercial use of what we build (only sometimes successfully
Finally, a lot of people don't realize it, but the government LIKES it when people have an incentive to commercialize things. $300 toilet seats aside, the government would MUCH RATHER just go out and buy some COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) technology than pay to have it developed. If the company they give the R&D funds to can commercialize a product and get it on the GSA schedule, the government frequently considers that a job well done. This may happen just as quickly with open source, but I don't think that's been proven yet.
Finally, there are a whole class of things for which (at least initially) the government might not see a commercial use for, AND the contractor might not either [some strange intelligence application, or weird battlefield piece of hardware, for instance]. If the government can say "and if you find a commercial use for this, you can have it", more people may be interested in scratching their heads over the problem enough to respond to an RFP or bid on a proposal.
Andrew Dalke writes:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" -- Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
That seems to me a very clear statement that a public good--the Progress of Science--can be achieved by keeping "Writings" exclusive to the author.
This is a complete misinterpretation of the clause. If you go back to the original copyright laws -- the ones written by the authors of the Constitution, you will find that the Framers required, as a condition of copyright, that the works be published and distributed to the public in order to qualify for copyright. Works that were kept "exclusive" to the author, were ineligible for copyright. This is how patent law works -- if you want a patent, you must disclose to the public how your invention works. You cannot obtain a patent on a device, and simultaneously keep the operation of that device a secret. This is how copyright originally worked, before the 1976 rewrite.
In phrase "exclusive Right" was intended to be understood in the context of required publication. The "exclusive Right" is the right to exclude others from duplicating your invention or writing, not the keeping of writings "exclusive" to the author. The reason why the granting of exclusive rights -- the right to exclude -- was considered a tolerable evil was quite simple -- Such rights were only granted on condition of publication! The public good was that the works were published so that the public could learn from them, and from their examples, create new works! Hardly the case with the "licensed, unpublished, proprietary code" that Dalke is so fond of.
In fact, the keeping of writings exclusively to the author is exactly the problem that copyright was invented to solve!
The first copyright law covered books, charts, and maps. The inclusion of maps was no accident or afterthought. One of the problems in 18th century navigation was a lack of accurate maps. Mapmaking was a difficult, time-consuming, expensive process -- just as software development is today -- and with no way for mapmakers to protect their investments, they resorted to licensing agreements to restrict their users, just as software companies do today. With all of these secret maps, licensed restrictively to ship captains, very little progress was being made in accurate map-making. The problem was that no one could legally compare maps to each other, because all of the maps were locked up under non-disclosure agreements. Copyright was intended to change the situation by granting a monopoly over the reproduction of books, maps, and charts, in exchange for open publication of the works.
Dalke's misinterpretation turns the entire purpose of the Monopoly clause on its head. On the other hand, he can be forgiven for not understanding the purpose of copyright -- most of copyright law has been turned on its head in the last quarter century, beginning with the disasterous rewriting of the copyright code in 1976, and continuing with the disasterous decision to grant copyright protection to object code, and not requiring the publication of source code.
I have a brief analogy. Imagine that you, a young student, aspiring to become a novelist. A good teacher would tell you to read as many novels as you can by your favorite authors, because it's only by reading other people's great works, that you learn how to create your own great works. Imagine if you were told, "If you want to be a novelist, you may not read other people's novels -- that's illegal. You have two choices -- either learn to write from scratch, starting from grammar books, and moving on to short stories, and finally novels -- or alternatively, you can get a job with a book publisher which will permit you to read other people's novels, under strict non-disclosure agreements.
I don't think that such a system would result in very good novels, but that's exactly the situation with computer software. There's plenty of good and bad computer software, and millions of young computer programmers who would like nothing more then to be able to read and learn from that software, but the vast majority of it is locked up, never to be seen by more then a handful of people. Such software does NOT advance the progress of science. Science is advanced by publication, not by secrecy. Dalke's theory seems to be that things are ok, because "real" researchers like himself have access to the source code through their institutions, but for every elite, privileged researcher who has access to the source code, there are thousands of other people who do not, and are unable to contribute anything. They are locked out.
If we really wanted to improve the state of software, and everyone talks about how poor the quality of commercial software is, the first step is to require, as a condition of copyright, the publication of complete source code in conjunction with any object code. The problem is that our copyright law, particularly with respect to software, is so completely dysfunctional, that it no longer serves its purpose -- to build a public domain that others can draw from, learn, and improve upon.
The sole exception to the software copyright fiasco is the software published under the GPL. By mandating public disclosure of source code, programs published under the GPL fulfill the original purpose -- and mandate of copyright. The results validate the original purpose and design of copyright -- to promote scientific progress, by providing an openly published base of work that can be built and expanded on by others.
Something created with entirely public funds should become public domain, not licensed under any other terms.
I'm not a GPL basher.. but I don't think the GPL is the place for it.
It should become public domain, with absolutely no restrictions attached to it whatsoever.
If someone wants to continue work and GPL it, great... their version would be GPL.
If someone wants to take it and fold it into a proprietary system, that's great too. Companies pay taxes too, you know.
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.
This is a rather complex issue because there are many people who are "paying" to create software at Universities...(1) The students pay, as some of their tuition money must go to software development at the university (2) Businesses pay, as they often donate money to such projects (3) The public pays, as our tax dollars go to university grants (4) The researchers "pay" by putting in large amounts of time. Now, that I've said "who pays", let me try to classify in what order (that is, who pays the most in the typical situation):
1st: I believe it's clear that the researchers contribute the most to these projects, as they put in their own time.
2nd: I believe after the researchers, businesses contribute the most.
3rd/4th: After businesses, clearly the university students (NOT the university) who pay the most. In many universities, the yearly tuition comes up to 20,000+ dollars a year. Multiply that by thousands of students.
4th/3rd: After students, I think the public contributes the remainder. Note, the public may contribute *more* than students, because the public contributes to many student grants, not to mention putting the students through high school.
So, now I've identified the orders of interests. So what does that mean? What should each party get for his/her/their interest in it? How can we do this while satisfying the interests of all parties?
To satisfy the researchers interest -- the researcher should be able to publish the code under a non-free license for a limited time: just enough time to allow him to make a reasonable profit considering his/her efforts (pehaps 1 or 2 years). However, he should not be able to choose the license at his will, and certainly shouldn't have the EULA option. Researchers should only be able to publish under the least restrictive license which still gives them the possibility of profit. Some critical parts of the program should be public-domain from the start, so they can be reviewed. As for the rest of the license, it should be something which does not prohibit reverse-engineering, nor does it take away end-users rights to modify it on their system, or to distribute modifications: a license like the one Quake is released under, which is very liberal.
To satisfy the business' interest (for the businesses w/c contributed to the project), they should have full access to free use of the program, as well as source code. Additionally, 1-2 years after the initial release, businesses should have the right to make modifications and sell such under the license of their choice. Should the original investor choose to release under a license like the GPL, the business would be granted an excpetion, and would be able to treat it as if a BSD license.
To satisfy the students interest. Students should get free use of the program, as well as access to the source code, so they can make any modifications they want. They get the same deal businesses get, minus the option to modify and sell 1-2 years after the initial release. Furthermore, before 1-2 years, they should have the right to release source-code additions (but not modifications). If they make modifications, they should have to release them as binaries...they may release the source code for their modifications after the "inventors" 1-2 year license expires.
To satisfy the public's interest. Of course, the government has full access to the software, free of charge. After the 1-2 year profit-making deal given the original inventor, the work falls into public domain. Should the businesses have made modifications on that original work and sold them, the modified parts are not affected, but the non-modified parts must be public-domained.
The ultimate payback the public gets for supporting inventors little projects is to have public-domain access. The more involved the public (i.e., citizen taxdollars) are, the quicker that should come. In the case of typical software, where the public does not "donate" but does support it by paying to enforce draconian IP laws (w/c, btw, should be scaled back), the public doesn't get access soon enough [20 years for patents, life + 70 and (probably eternity, if they keep on extending it) for copyrights). For things where the public is only involved in that it protects IP, it should get public-domain access in at least 10 years.
Note, this also applies for GPLed and BSDed (free) software. The public pays to support GPLed and BSDed software by enforcing the terms of those contracts. Thus, after 10 years, the original work that was GPLed (but not the modifications) needs to fall into the public domain. The modifications should fall into public domain 10 years after their publication.
Personally, I like GPL and BSD better than public domain. But as the public does pay for GPL/BSD licenses by enforcing the terms of their contracts, even things covered under them should -- by logic -- eventually have to fall under the public domain.
Remember, an ideal world is a world where there is no intellectual property at all. GPL and BSD licenses are just a way help liberate information in a world where there is intellectual property.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen