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Congress Members Oppose GPL for Government Research
An anonymous reader writes "Rep Jim Davis(D-FL), Tom Davis (R-Va), Ron Kind (D-WI), and Adam Smith (D-WA) are trying to outlaw the gpl. Let's write to them and show them that we didn't elect these guys to screw us over." The issue here isn't the GPL in general, it's specifically what sort of license government-funded research ought to have. Code written directly by Federal government employees has no copyright whatsoever and is therefore roughly equivalent to a BSD-type license; but if the government pays a non-employee to write code, there are no firm requirements or guidelines on how that code ought to be licensed. Prudence suggests that since it's our money funding the research, we ought to make sure the public gets some return from the endeavor.
...that if the government hires a non-employee to write code, the government makes said non-employee sign all kinds of papers specifically stating that whatever s/he "invents" on behalf of the government belongs to the government exclusively and they can do with it whatever they want.
Honestly, I can't believe that they're wasting time on this issue.
GOBACK.
If they are arguing that governement developed software can only be public domain, then fine, but I am not offended by that position.
If they are arguing that governement developed software may be given a proprietary licence but may not be given a GPL licence then I emphatically disagree.
I know that it is the hallmark of /. to be reactionary, but before we inundate these folks with email can we verify the validity of a Anonymous Coward submission of an article at NewsForge that was submitted by an Anonymous Reader?
You cannot outlaw a license. It is an agreement
between two parties.
Federal Money may subsidise some of the work but let me give you some truths about out Federal Government.
1. They compete with the companies.. using the companies own code.
2. They will own rights to the full product even if the product was only 5% funded by the government.
My company sells software to many countries, including the US under Fixed Price Contracts. These contracts are set by the US contracting agencies so that the US owns rights to the binaries (This was standard for a long time, I am not sure now). The US takes the binaries and then tries to sell them to the same countries we are trying to sell to. Guess our own competition is our own software.
While this seems nice, the Federal government already shows that they would use this tactic to put companies out of business. Sorry, this is unacceptable to me.
Outlawing the GPL use is unacceptable as well for the same reasons. Our company made software, enhanced for a governement, the government should not be able to use its rights to take over the software. This is what the GPL prevents.. the same scenario as above.. just think GPL.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
The Government uses our money to license out companies to make software for them, that they in-turn will not have to release to the public since technically the government never made it in the first place. And then the government grants licenses to other companies to recoup our costs and yet we don't get to see the program or a refund if the government liscenses out said technology? Dire Straits said it best, Money for Nothing and our Programs for Free!
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
...even corporations.
The BSD license is the fairest way to handle government code. Corporations are taxpayers too, and should have the same access to this code without having their own code forced open and their business model destroyed.
On the other hand, closing (non-classified) government code benefits no one. As taxpayers, we would be benefited by the availability of such code.
I think Bill Gates would very much like to see the end of the GPL in government code, but don't think he's out to ban OSS - remember, BSD-licensed code was used for implementing TCP/IP originally. MS likes to see government code too, and it is their right, just as it is ours.
As for the issue of non-Americans, you could license it strictly to Americans, but then how would you enforce that license? No country in the world is going to hold up a license which prohibits them from something another nation gets to have....
One thing to think about: not all open-source projects are GPL. I have two open-source projects: one is LGPL, the other is BSD. If all US gov't code were released under the GPL, I couldn't use it for my projects.
Jean-Marc
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I for one am pleased to see this. I work for a company that sells software and have been pissed several times when it has been impossible for me to use software that my tax dollars have gone to pay for because it's trendy for people at universities to GPL everything that breathes.
The most recent example of this was a set of nice Java random variable distribution libraries that I found and wanted to use for some code I was writing. However, they were under the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL which would have allowed me to use library calls), so that meant that even though they were libraries, I couldn't even call them from a commercial product. If they had been in a BSD style license, I could have used them. So I ended up spending some time implementing the ones I needed.
Many people do not seem to realize that when software is protected by the GPL, it is not only 'open source' but it is also prohibiting anyone from using it if they do not also put their software under the GPL. (There are some workarounds - you can always have the GPL code run in a separate process and use IPC/RPC to get results from it and technically not break the GPL, but that can get ugly quick.)
It's fine for someone to make the decision that they want to force people who use their code to use the GPL. BUT - if it is code that was developed with a government grant, to me it seems wrong to use a license that forces a specific use of the code and promotes what is basically a political agenda (force everything to be GPL), instead of using a BSD style license which makes the code truly open. Things paid for by the government should be used to go back to the community at large if at all possible, and the GPL limits the utility of the research performed under government grants.
Where is a good place to find out who funded various Congressmen? With a system like there is in the states it would be nice to find out the 'reasons' that Congresmen support certan ideas.
If someone gets a grant to change the Linux kernel, they can license their changes under both the BSD and the GPL. If a private company gets a grant to write a diet analysis program, they can license it under the BSD, and also integrate the code into their own product.
This is the right thing to do anyway. All government funded development should be made available to the public without restriction.
The article does not say at all that Congressmen are trying to "outlaw the GPL", as the poster's inflammatory words would have you believe, but that they do not want taxpayer-funded software to be licensed under the GPL. That's a significant difference.
One thing a lot of people don't seem to realize (or just don't think about often), is that the GPL only applies to code, not the ideas behind the code.
:)
Say, for instance, I want to use the GNU readline library (it's the library that gives the text-interface to a lot of programs the same feel. bash, mysql text interface, and others.. ). It's GPL, not LGPL. But I don't want my program to be GPL'd. What do I do? I rewrite the functionality. There's absolutely no problem with doing this.
By GPLing the code from government sponsored works, it only means you can't copy/paste the code into your non-GPL program. It doesn't mean you can't take the idea behind the code (and even look in the code to get the idea) and then recode the idea.
Basically, anyone complaining about code like this released under the GPL is just lazy and looking to make a quick buck.. do we know any companies like this?
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
There is a funny definition of "freedom" there. "Free" as long as one abides by the restrictions placed on derivative works by the author. The bigest problem with freedom is that freedom includes the liberty to say or do things that are not right or not in the best interest of the comunity as a whole. Free speech includes the freedom to create hate speech. Free association includes the freedom to join the KKK. You can't simultaneously say "this is free" and "you must give what you make from this back to the community." GPL advocates would be much more honest of they were to argue for the GPL as a form of software conservatory rather than mangling the concept of freedom.
Of course the GPL is a very good thing. However, that does not make public domain a very bad thing. Placing many of the standard technologies into the public domain would help to prevent many of the copyright and patent snafus that have developed over the last few years. HTML and http thrived because their placement in the public domain permitted everyone to write code for them. Government-produced documents must be in the public domain in order to support democracy.
First, let me get out my special padded helmet to protect myself before I get smacked upside the head by some of you.
Our company recently did a website for an organization which was organizing a web broadcast for a governmental organization. So, although we were technically being paid by the organization, we were indirectly being paid by the governmental organization.
But let's remove those distinctions and say the governmental organization themselves had hired us to create the website for them.
Well, our site used software which we had developed in house, at our own expense, prior to being hired. Some of it, however, was developed and coded while hired by them.
Technically, none of the modifcations we made to the software could have worked without the software we had written before.
The question is: if we were required to license this software as Open Source or GPL, would we have had to license *all* of it, including the code that was written prior to the bid?
Also, say that we had had to write the code from scratch. We might have charged less for our work than we could have, thinking, "We can reuse this code and sell it to customers later on."
I think that except in cases where the government is actually purchasing the software outright froma developer, it gets very sticky to say what should and shouldn't be freely developed.
While I agree that there are many cases in which making software open source is a good thing, the truth is if we were required by law to have, say, a section on our website that said, "By the way, here's all the code we've ever written, available for your own use. For free." it is unlikely that we would be able to continue to function as a profitable business. After all, what customer is going to pay for software that is being advertised or described as "free"?
Our tax dollars go to all sorts of projects. For instance, medicines are often developed through the help of government grants. Ever tried to get prescription drugs for free?
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Having worked in a DoD office whose job it was SPECIFICALLY to foster relationships between the governement and civilian entities in doing research I would like to add this one idea.
First to set the stage: While this is geared more towards scientific research and not specifically software coding, it holds that much of the computational research done requires, duh, software code. Be that as it may, my statement is slightly more general than just that but relates to all such cooperation between Gov and Civ to produce something.
While it might seem immediatly obvious that if the government in anyway pays for something to be made than it should be considered "by the people for the people" there is something else to be considered. In many cases the government doesn't have the people, money, or equipement to do the research. In that case, whichever of those three items are missing (or we are the experts in) we will partner with civilian companies in an effort to take advantage of what they are experts in and bolster what they are deficient in. This is a VERY common occurance and I traveled to many trade shows (SEMA, CIS, etc) to try and get the word out on exactly this type of partnership.
The problem becomes that no company will get into this partnership if there isn't some way they can make some money off it. The typical agreement is that it is licensed free of charge to the government but for all other commerical uses they have an exclusive right for some given time. Typically it just revolves around a patent granted with free use for the Gov.
If this didn't happen then the governement would pay a lot more money to try and get this "thing, or in some cases simply never be able to do it cause we don't have, typically, the expertise or equipement to do it. At the same time the public will never get this "thing" because the company was never able to do it either.
Finally what happens is if the government DOES end up making this thing it is VERY expensive because we are the only ones buying it and typically from one vendor. But if we can get someone else making it for a profit and selling it to the greater public, the price scales down from the over all increase economics of scale. A perfect example of this is semi-conductors. The price of those in the early years for the government were astronomical not just because they were new but because we were the only ones buying them. As soon as commercial applications existed to increase both supply and demand, then the price drops both from volume as well as research performed to decrease production costs.
So why all this blathering, just to let you know that it isn't always in the best interestes of anyone for all governement funded research to always 100% go free as in beer. And for those that are 100% against anything looking like a patent monopoly, I will add that most contracts do include verbage to ensure fair licensing to competitors (unlike say, drug patents) to ensure a healthy diversity of sources to prevent price gouging as well as the possibility of the only supplier going belly up and supplies drying up.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
"They purchased the rights to use the Mosaic code and then gave IE away for free."
I heard this was due to a clause in the contract saying MS had to pay a pecentage of the revenue from IE to Mosaic. I imagine they had dollar signs in their eyes when they wrote that contract and did not imagine the lengths MS would go to screw them.
They found out the hard way.
War is necrophilia.
I don't know what would have happened in the alternate universe that's the subject of this thread, but in our reality MS had little to do with the popularity of the Internet. It was Netscape all the way.
MS believed for a long time that they could create their own network along the same lines as AOL, but since MSN would be bundled with the OS, it would become absolutely dominent. If the Microsoft vision had come true, the Internet as we know it would enjoy the same popularity today as Linux does on the desktop.
Gates even said once that he couldn't understand why anybody would use HTML rather than just serializing Windows API calls.
Once it become clear that the Internet would be the "one true network" Microsoft finally woke up and crushed Netscape.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
If the software relates to national security, then it should be made top secret.
Here's two examples...
1. A goverment contractor builds an encryption system that'll be used to encrypt communications between locations, that should be designed top secret.
2. If DARPA gives a grant to a university to create a better piece of weather modeling software, it should be public domain. Now, if a company goes and takes that software and builds upon it and sells it, fine.
However, I as a citizen of the united states should be able to obtain a copy of the source code, since ultimately, my tax money went to fund the creation of that software.
What it sounds like is that the congress wants to possibly put some regime in place were tax payers money goes to find a project and then that project gets handed off to the highest bidder/(company who gave the most ammount of money to their campaign coffers...)
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
GPL exists because proprietary software exists. If software was not protected by copyright, all software would be public domain and #1.) there would be no proprietary software #2.) there would be no GPL.
The sole purpose of GPL is to turn copyright against itself with the goal of defeating proprietary software. If all software in the world was forced to being GPL, it would be identical to all software being public domain. So, in a sense, the GPL aims diminish or remove the institution of copyright with respect to computer software.
So it's a simple question: Do we want proprietary software or not? If you believe there should be proprietary software in this world, then government funded software should be BSD or public domain. (depending on if the authors want credit.) If you believe proprietary software is unnecessary and damaging to society, government funded software should be GPL until the government agrees to stop recognizing software copyrights.
For my own interests, I would prefer GPL, which is the core of what my business is based upon. I provide complete Open Source consulting services. All software I write is covered by GPL so that my proprietary-minded competitors cannot benefit from my work, while other community-focused businesses can.
Tell me the amount of taxes paid by Microsoft.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
As,
A long time software writer/consultant to the US Government I can assure you that the GPL has already caused me great grief while trying to write software.
Specifically, I'm writing an open-source simulation model which I'd love to make GPL. But, I can't. Why?
Because the minute I make my open-source model GPL those dirty rotton competitors of mine are going to take the code, go straight to the guys I deal with in the government and get that next big contract to "upgrade" the software.
I'm the one inovating here, but I'm a small fish in a big pond. My competitor is a VERY large aircraft manufacturer, guess who.
Do I stand a chance against those guys if I cannot specifically control the code. No!
Keep in mind I have a lot of algorithms that I've created on my own. And sure the government has paid for XYZ project, but they got a good deal because I was able to provide them binaries of my code.
Otherwise, they would have had to pay 10 times the amount they paid me for project XYZ from somebody, see above, that doesn't already have the algorithms.
So, think about it really hard before you write that letter to that congressperson. In a LARGE percentage of cases, when the government contracts for a piece of software they are getting 10 percent new code and 90 percent code that's been invented utilizing somebodies hard earned time.
BSD all the way baybee. There is no logical reason why using government-generated code should obligate one to make one's own code freely available, because we have already paid for it through taxation.
Then there is no problem. Most code produced using government funding is available free for the asking, with no license and no terms, under the Freedom Of Information Act. Why screw things up by adding a license?
Any reason why I should be able to use code that your tax dollars paid for? Maybe I'm British, maybe German, maybe Chinese, maybe North Korean. Maybe I'm Saddam bin Laden. You still want to give me access to "your" source?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From the article:
Well, now this all makes sense. Microsoft wants the government to close source so they can use the DMCA against terrorism, entrenching the position of Palladium. Or not. I think I've gone a little wacky in the head from too many long nights.
I notice you are unwilling to take credit for your words... that is wise.
"False. TCP/IP won on technical reasons not because of the BSD license."
Why do you think this is an either/or proposition? TCP/IP won over something like say NetBEUI or IPX/SPX for technical reasons, but it was widely adopted largely due to licensing arrangements. That made it a win-win scenario, which we all like to see.
"Again false. Commercialization != proprietary."
I never used the term proprietary. The fact is the GPL does prevent companies from making money from selling software. That goes above and beyond the notion of open and proprietary. As has been pointed out before TCP/IP is an open standard, and there are open source implementations of it, and it has been widely commercialized.
I cannot think of a single instance where a GPL'ed piece of software has had nearly the wide adoption of software licensed under BSD. Apache, sendmail, bind, etc. all use BSD style licenses.
"This amounts to a federal subsidy for commercial interests."
You haven't read the Bayh-Dole act, have you? It grants Federal research institutions the rights to license and patent the work they do. One of the other ongoing goals in this realm is to help make research institutions somewhat self-funding through licensing fees.
So it's not a federal subsidy for commercial interests at all.
"If my tax dollars are used in a project by a company that pays no taxes (yet wants rights like a normal citizen) then I demand my fair share of the work."
Which is why I recommend the BSD license at a minimum. Using said license you have just as much access to the software as does the corporations who might wish to utilize it. Using the GPL, the software is only good for end-users, not developers... thus this limits the availability of the technology in the marketplace.
"Sounds to me like you do not understand the GPL and probably are watching it rain outside your office window on One Microsoft Way."
Sounds to me like you've been sniffing to much glue.
Income taxes? $3,684,000,000 [yahoo.com] for the year ended June 30, 2000. Or were you talking about sales and other taxes?
Very very interesting (by the way the figures you give are for 2002, not 2000). MS's total revenue has increased by $6 billion over the last three years, but their tax bill has decreased by over $1.2 billion (i.e. since George W. got into the Whitehouse - I'd be interested to see a breakdown on the taxes to see why). However, net income is down $1.6 billion dollars, despite vastly improved revenue and lower taxes.
No wonder MS is worried about the GPL :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
How do you define "funded"? Do the Windows licenses acquired by the government constitute funding?
Should Windows be public domain? If not, why not?
From correspondence I had with RMS not long ago:
(Indented text mine)
<quote>
I understand that US law prohibits any works created by
the government from holding any copyright, but immediately
fall into public domain.
That is true. However, work done by contractors with US government
contracts can be copyrighted and therefore can be GPL'd.
But by releasing modifications to
GPL licensed software, US government modifications would have
to fall under the public domain would they not?
Modifications written by government agencies would be in the public
domain.
This is no disaster. They would still be free software, and the modified
program as a whole would still be under the GPL.
</quote>
Those are Stallmans views on the US government and GPL code.
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
Mr. Smith,
I recently read about your letter opposing the GPL license in government R&D projects. On one hand, I agree that original research which creates new software should be released to the public domain. However, this is the status quo. Currently, all original government-funded projects are released to the public domain without a restrictive license. So I have to question your intent.
Your letter seems to suggest that legislation should be enacted which prevents government-funded researchers from doing any work on software licensed under the GPL. I believe that if DARPA researchers determine that they would rather improve existing GPL software in order to meet their own needs than create their own public-domain version from scratch, they should be allowed to do so. Why should we force them to re-invent the wheel if they have some specific security-related need that can be answered by modifying free, publicly available GPL software which has already done 99% of the work for them?
Go here and search for "microsoft" to see why this bill is up. Also, the software industry as a whole has given almost $10,000,000 so far in this election cycle.
Oh yeah, and Microsoft is Smith's #1 contributor with $22,900, more than double the #2 contributor.
$22,900. Is that all it costs to buy a senator these days?