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Advocacy Prompts Reconsideration of Anti-GPL Letter
As far as I can tell, it started with this Newsforge story (Newsforge is also part of OSDN, Slashdot's corporate parent). The Newsforge story was excerpted and copied by an Australian newspaper, and from there, it was off and spreading. The headline chosen, "Washington State Congressman attempts to outlaw GPL", is not particularly accurate, but it did a great job at stirring up outrage. Outlaw the GPL! Over my dead keyboard!
From there it really started making the rounds. It was repeatedly submitted to Slashdot with all sorts of flaming, incorrect commentary - in fact, after reading a dozen different submissions, I didn't think any of them were even close to accurate. I picked one and posted it, trying to do my best to a) provide an accurate headline and b) provide an accurate summary of the issue at stake in a few sentences. To recap again: when the Federal government creates computer code (or any copyrightable work) directly, it gets no copyright whatsoever and the work is true public domain (quirk of the U.S. copyright laws - the 50 states, corporations, individuals, and other legal entities all get copyrights automatically, but the Federal government does not). If you want to copy, reproduce, or sell an .mp3 of the U.S. Congress singing "God Bless America" after September 11, go right ahead: there is no copyright on it whatsoever. (Actually, the song itself is still under copyright, but Congress' performance of it wouldn't be...)
However, when the Federal government hires a non-employee to create code or copyrighted works, there is no clear rule regarding the copyright status of the work. Sometimes the contract calls for rights to the work to be assigned to the Federal government (the Feds don't get original copyrights, but if someone else gets an original copyright, the Feds can acquire it). Sometimes the contractor keeps the copyright and gets to do whatever they want with it. Sometimes the contract doesn't specify. Note that this is NOT a BSD-vs.-GPL dispute, not by a long shot. Very little code financed by the Federal government is ever licensed under either of these two licenses - the choice is basically agency-proprietary (the Federal agency asked for the rights in the contract, and kept them) or company-proprietary (the agency didn't ask for the rights, and the contractor kept them).
And most of the time it doesn't matter. I've written code for the Federal government as both a contractor and an employee, and 99% of it was so specific and customized that it would be of use to no one else, regardless of its licensing or copyright status. Probably the majority of code written for the Federal government falls into that category - internal use software for very specific needs.
But some of it is undoubtedly useful. Some major projects funded by the government in conjunction with academia have escaped from licensing purgatory, typically through the efforts of the researchers working on them who approach the issue from an academic freedom viewpoint and want to see their work widely adopted. GRASS is one major one that I know of. A commenter pointed out ADA as an example. For code which is useful to others, either a BSD-like or GPL-like license would be truly beneficial and easily defensible as a public policy choice. In the non-code world, the government makes choices like that all the time - it might choose to purchase a particular piece of land and commit to making it available to everyone forever by declaring it a National Park and committing to maintain it, a GPL-like philosophy; alternately, it might choose to just dump a particular piece of property on the market, putting it up for auction and letting the purchaser do what he wills with it, a BSD-like philosophy.[1] Either of these two options might be optimal; but paying for code which ends up remaining proprietary is like buying a new stadium to benefit a very specific corporation which owns a very specific sports team: the type of use of public funds which is generally seen as sleazy and the opposite of good governance.
Either of the first two choices can be appropriate in certain situations. What does not seem appropriate is paying for proprietary code, although this is generally what happens when the government contracts for code. Since the government has the ability to provide a benefit to the public (open code) at essentially zero cost, it should do so. An example which has struck me several times over the past few years: every airport in the world has the same problem, coordinating planes taking off and landing and keeping them from running into each other. Yet each nation (and often each airport) solves the problem over and over, paying heavily for custom-designed, one-shot software development. Imagine if the world's airports could simply install GNU-AirTrafficControl 2.7, and have a complete, working, bug-free and cost-free air traffic control system. It would cost every nation less to do it this way, but it would also make a lot less money for the consultants retained to develop these systems.
But leave off the advocacy for moment - I was following the story itself. As noted above, the outcry has prompted many of the other Representatives who originally signed the letter to reconsider. The AP story even suggests that some of the signatories were actively misled - that the letter they thought they were signing didn't mention the GPL at all. However it actually played out, some good has been done.
That's good. What's not so good is that much of the outcry was probably generated by stories titled "Washington State Congressman attempts to outlaw GPL". The right outcome occurred, but for the wrong reasons and in the wrong manner. I am left wondering whether the community would have made the same sort of response on this issue if every story that had been posted about it was 100% accurate and non-inflammatory.
[1] If you're not familiar with the BSD-like and GPL-like classes of software licenses, this won't make a lot of sense to you, so please read up if necessary.
...because the BSD license is essentially no license at all. So, when the government releases the SuperFoomatic 1.0, anyone can do with it as they please.
If we want a GPL'ed SuperFoomatic, we just take that code and release it under the GPL license. No point in having it release originally under the GPL as the released code can be GPL'ed "retroactively".
The only addiition I can think of is that perhaps it should be dual licensed, so that corporations have to pay for its use, with those monies paying for additional governmental software research.
If the code is good, it doesn't matter whose hands it falls into. Odds are that if it falls into bad hands that find an exploit, it will also fall into good hands that find that same exploit, and alert the developers.
Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. Public domain is much better. The code can be taken up by private companies and they can improve and sell it. And nothing I am aware of keeps that same code for forming the basis of a GPL and/or BSD project.
So turn the code loose with no strings at all, and let the best licensing system win!
The only good weather is bad weather.
Imagine if the world's airports could simply install GNU-AirTrafficControl 2.7, and have a complete, working, bug-free and cost-free air traffic control system.
...and we know what Congress feels about doing a lot of work....
True, but... I assume in this model anyone, anywhere could see the source codebase... with any of its bugs and exploits.... Do we want this for these kinds of software implementations (of which there are many done by/for the U.S. government)?
From what I can tell from the various sources (some good, some bad), the crux of the argument here is to avoid Smith et. al., making GPL or BSD licenses for government-produced/contracted code illegal. And that's only right. However, as far as I'm concerned, this simply starts the sticky discussion on what kinds of licenses/protection should be applied to what kind of projects. That's likely to be a lot more work.
Anyway, one can only hope that this news gets replayed as "X tries to restrict freedom", and these guys don't get re-elected.
I think this analogy is completely flawed. Under the BSD license, the original piece of code will always remain free for everyone to use. When the government sells a piece of property, it's no longer available to the public. FreeBSD didn't go away when Apple incorporated pieces of the code into OS X.
Both the BSDL and GPL keep the original code free for all, the difference is in the derived works - the GPL stipulates that they, too, must remain free, wheras the BSDL doesn't. I think a more appropriate analogy would be: the BSD license would allow a photographer to take a picture of the sunset in a national park, and retain all rights to it. Under the GPL, the photographer could still make and sell the photograph, but he couldn't stop people who bought the photograph from making copies and giving them away, or selling them.
...because it's an important public policy question: it shouldn't be decided by a backroom push from business lobbyists...
Where the hell have you been for the past 50 years?! This is how all policy is decided by governments. Pretty simple equasion:
BribeH^H^H^H^H^Corporate funding + politician = new policy.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
If I had moderator points today I would mod you insightful. This is the very core of the upside to open source development. If the system is as important as some of the government systems are it should most definitely be open source!
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Having watched the arc of this story, I agree with Michael that there is *definitely* some overreacting going on, and that such overreactions reflect negatively on the community.
GPL does make things difficult for commercial exploitation, especially for software companies which care more about tying you to them with a product rather than their service ... so a GPL license for everyone, and a commercial for fee license for companies works well (you see it used often).
Advances science and business in equal measure, and lets the government recoup some of the costs.
This is by far this best solution, and shows how public domain is a great way to disseminate knowledge and ideas. Since the public funded government commissioned it, let the public get some value for their money, by letting everyone have equal access to it.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Adam Smith supports legislation that increases barriers to entry? My Econ teacher is probably having convulsions right now.
This is a weird subject, really. GPL is good, but when you really think about it, source code for government software isn't really something that should fall into the wrong hands...
Security through obscurity doesn't work. Ask Microsoft.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The GPL=National Park, BSD="dump on market" is a completely unfair analogy. If you make land into a National Park, everyone has a right to use them. If you sell the land, only the landowner gets to use it.
However, that is not the case with GPL vs. BSD. I can freely use and modify any code under the GPL or the BSD. It's not like some company can just take over BSD code and never let me use it. They are both free.
The difference is that with GPL if I write a commercial application and 99% of the code is mine and 1% is GPL I am forced to give out my 99% of code. With BSD I don't.
Now this is fair if it is just some Joe Programmer on his own time who wrote the 1% of GPL code. He can let people use (or not use) it as he feels. It is *NOT* fair if that Joe Programmer is being paid to write that code with MY tax dollars! That code should be freely given to the taxpayers to do with it whatever they want, including using it in their closed-source programs and selling it.
It is not "corporate welfare" because it benefits everyone equally! Corporations can use it, individual taxpayers can use it, universities can use it, etc. Corporate welfare is if they give something to corporations that only corporations will benefit from.
Brian Ellenberger
I guess it's easier to litigate than to create.
--- have you healed your church website?
If you don't understand things that fit under the broad description of "intellectual property law", then please don't try to make analogies to further misinform people. This is best explained in abstract terms, rather than analogies, as software has no analog in the physical world.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
see, the gpl license is very much like modern encryption alogrithms. prior to the days of RSA, ala world wars, encryption and security was based around the fact that people can hide secure algorithms well enough to keep things secret. in other words, if anyone found out the algorithm, the encryption scheme became utterly pointless.
relatively recently, encryption has undergone a complete turn-around in ideology. now, most every cryptologist believes that the algorithm should not only be simple but also VERY OPEN. the more eyes that look at it, the more errors can be spotted, and as time has told, today's crypto systems, for example RSA, are much more secure than the enigma. everyone and their dog knows how it works, and still no one can break it.
the same thing goes for software. the whole "falls into the wrong hands" argument works exactly the same as crypto-systems. if a crypto-system falls into the wrong hands (as someone else noted), it will also fall into the right hands, and errors will be fixed.
licensing government software under the gpl opens it up, and in the long run reduces the error rate and effectively, it's security, etc. people still think that if they hide the source to the software, it will be more secure. PLEASE look at what happened to cryptology in recent times and act accordingly.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Lessig has some good commentary on this in his blog. Basically, he says that if you follow the argument of the New Democrats, then proprietary code should not be allowed either, and only code that goes straight to the Public Domain should be sanctioned by the government, as it could then be used by anyone.
Interesting
In Vino Veritas
I haven't found a statement of the rules, but many academic projects funded by the National Science Foundation require that the data collected (or non-confidential bits of it) be made available to the academic community at large. I think that that is a correct policy of the NSF and that the analogy holds for much of software development
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Just because the source is there doesn't mean people are going to look at it. A lot of open source developers develop for fun. Unit testing string conversion functions is not fun, therefore it won't be willingly done.
There a books containing all the laws for your town/county/state/country. How many people have really read them?
NASA uses and produces software under the GPL license.
Any number of of projects funded by NSF, and other Governmental Agency, grants end up licensing software under the GPL.
There is an aspect to this discussion that I don't think gets enough play. The GPL is a great boon to academics who don't have to purchase costly software, and risk throwing obstacles in the way of those who would reproduce their work, or reinvent wheels. This boon comes with the very small cost that the software so produced should be shared with others. I think that this is in harmony with the spirit of Scientific Research, the "standing on the shoulders of Giants" as Newton said.
Sean Connery: I've got to ask you... about the penis mightier.
Alex Trebek: What? No nonono... That's the pen is mightier.
Connery: Gussy it up however ya want, Trebek --- What matters is, does it work? Will it really mighty my penis, man?
Trebek: It's not a product, Mr Connery.
Connery: Because I've ordered devices like that before. Wasted a pretty penny, I don't mind telling you. And if the penis mightier really works, I'll order a dozen!
Trebek: It's not a penis mightier, Mr Connery. There's no such thing.
Nicholas Cage: Wait wait wait... Are you selling penis mightiers?
Trebek: No! No I'm not!
Connery: Well you're sitting on a gold mine, Trebek.
Why not forbid government-funded scientists to publish their findings, too? That would be really in line with the current reactionary attitudes.
Goverment and industry are trying to reverse the wheel. Why?
Because Open Source is functioning and becoming a working example against the present thought-control. A non-functioning GPL would not be opposed with so much fuss. And before the dinos die, they do a lot of stomping and tail-swinging.
Such laws will finally result in making the US weaker - as any protection schemes do. But it may take some time...
Software doesn't kill people, people kill people.
Okay, maybe that's too glib, but the song remains the same. Anything that would be considered a serious security threat would be classified as such; The mechanisms to do this with governmental data already exist.
I would hate for something as artistic as software to fall into an anti-terrorist mantra, because there's a forest-for-the-trees problem. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes an MTA application is just an MTA application, even though it could be used to deliver mail with contents that aren't in the best interests of the commonwealth.
The problem with the 'wrong hands' argument is that we need to trust whomever is entrusted with the definition of 'wrong hands.' If that is a large, bureaucratic judicial system, it's probably inefficient, if it's an efficient corporation, the chances of ever seeing the code is nearly non-existent. :)
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Unless you mean that it removes the possibility that a large corporation could squeeze out it's competitors.
Otherwise, having the code released under GPL would encourage enhancements by various parties, that would/could result in more competitive products. No one entity can out-market their version of the code with a large war chest. Their version of said software will have it's fate decided by the quality of the software.
The Unitied States of America was formed on the basis of freedom. It is necessary that the principle of freedom be given to the software that the U.S. creates with taxpayer money.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Ok you have missed the point entirely. The GPL issue is not the same as making an open source government. The issue is that government contractors should be forced to license the software to the government under the GPL. All the GPL says is that if you get the binary you can have the source and the license be changed to stop you from propagating it. Nowhere does is say you must release the software into the wild; it only addresses what happens IF you chose to do that.
For security sensitive software there could be additional contract terms about the distribution of any of it. The contractor can be hired under a contract that keeps their lips buttoned about what the software they write does. The government can then have other contractors build on the government's licensed copies of the software where that's useful. The real question is whether the second contractor who is developing against the copy licensed by the government is bound by the GPL, or can the contracts be written to be stronger than the GPL. I think they can, contract law always allows you to give away more of your freedoms to get the job.
Finally, if there are sections of code determined to be useful and the decision is made to release that to the public, getting the licenses release is a no-op. The idea is that the government is paying for software -- it should be licensed to them in a manner that can be used for the public good. This is why GPL is a good choice for government.
I was offended by the text of the letter, let alone the purpose. I wrote to two congressmen about it because the letter was glaringly, factually wrong but was signed by leaders in our country.
-Paul Komarek
You can't "license" rights that you don't have. The person who takes under a BSD and re-releases under a GPL does not own the copyright - she is not the author, it is not her original work. The only thing the second person can restrict with the GPL is that which she owns, i.e., her own ADDITIONS and CHANGES to the work (if any).
This is a non-issue, surely. Not letting dangerous government information (ie classified information) into the public's hands is covered by secrecy laws that have nothing to do with copyright law, which exists to secure the "rights" (whether you believe them too many, too few, or just right) of IP holders.
If you come across a classified military report, you can't spread it around, regardless of what licence it is under. I'm pretty sure it would be completely uncopyrighted, if it was produced by the government - once they become unclassified, you can copy them as much as you like.
There's no reason to explain why the GPL would eliminate competition, because it's reasonably assumed that you have a basic understanding of high school economics, which you appear to not have.
If you release it under the GPL, all derived code must itself be released under the GPL. Like it or not, this *does* interfere with commercialization of the software, nobody is going to spend millions of dollars writing code they'll have to give away, under most circumstances.
On the other hand, BSD or Public domain carries no such strings. Someone can pick up the BSD or PD code, alter and adapt it, and make the result proprietary, *and* someone else can take the same original PD/BSD code, alter and adapt it, and release it under the GPL or a similar required open-source liscense. The best of all possible worlds, if making something government-generated generally useful requires a lot of up-front investment, in ways that don't appeal to OSS communities, someone can take that opportunity and make an investment with reasonable hope of return. And if something of benefit can be derived in ways that "scratch an itch", the result can be released or recreated under the GPL and kept available.
The problem is that some systems should never be made public. I don't want the command computer source code for the ICBM system running around loose, "many eyes" security methods are a bad thing when intrusion impacts are measured in megatons. So, like it or not, some code will have to remain forever closed.
--Dave
While I agree that some pieces of software that have security concerns for one reason or another might not be best released as open code, but the vast majority of government funded code is for more mundane applications and could be useful to the general public without potential harm from security issues. I have spent the last couple of months working on a piece of software for a government contract that has been written literally dozens of times before but is considered proprietary by the contractors that developed it. The cost and inefficiency is staggering. That is my opinion at least.
Sig? What if I prefer Glock?
Someone who actually understands the issue at hand, in context, even, and is able to give a relatively straightforward and largely unbiased review of what has occurred and why you should care. Crazy!
And for the record, if there were a GNU-AirTraffic piece of software, it would take about 10 years to get to anything resembling 2.7; it would probably spend most of that ten years at version 0.9.x or whatever. What is up with OS projects being totally unwilling to actually go up in versions? Sheesh.
GPL removes competition by preventing alternative forms of organizations and licensing.
If a big corporation can convince people to take its proprietary version of the software, is that so bad? Do you think that consumers are idiots and that *you* know what is in their best interests more than they do? Mos timportantly, it does not prevent anyone else from creating GPL versions of the original public domain software.
As far as the principle of freedom, what is more free than an open source license? GPL is *less* free!
This is easily proven:
Definition: freedom is that licensing system which allows the most people or entities to distribute and modify the software.
Freedom measure of GPL:
The only people or organizations which can improve the software are those with the time and/or resources to do so *without* the renumeration provided by a proprietary interest in the results.
Freedom measure of public domain:
All of the same people and organizations covered under GPL
-and-
Any organization which wants to adopt other licensing schemes, with alternate investment and renumeration potential.
The latter is clearly more than the former, therefore GPL is less freedom oriented (less free) than public domain.
*case closed*
The only good weather is bad weather.
Sigh. I wish I could edit my own postings after I put them up there. A deficiency of slashdot. Of course, I deserve a whack by a small stick for not re-reading before hitting the submit button.
The third paragraph SHOULD HAVE READ:
As far as the principle of freedom, what is more free than a public domain license? GPL is *less* free!
oops
The only good weather is bad weather.
So you agree that what MS did with kerberos is OK? I know this is a troll, but what BS.
Let me give an example, say the government funds an email server. I create a plugin that expands on the functionality of the email server and create a small business around this consulting other companies on its use.
You are a large company that markets the email server. If we use the GPL, you can not close me out with proprietary extensions. Same thing would work in reverse, but you would not care that much. If it was a BSD or Public Domain, you could make proprietary extensions that would disallow my plugin from working. What makes you more important than me? Both of our tax money went to this hypothetical project.
By your reasoning it would be ok to leave trash or campfires burning. The parks are GPLed. We don't let companies come in and strip mine Yellow Stone. If we were to use your analogy, we would let loggers cut down the Redwood forest.
The GPL says share and share alike. you want to keep something to yourself, then do all the work yourself. No way are you takeing what is mine. By definition, anything of the Government is partially mine.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Why are states' works automatically copyrighted, but not the feds? Or vice versa? The difference doesn't make sense, they're both just regional forms of government. A state has also the same branches of government. I don't get why the difference iny copyright law applicability.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
Even if I have a piece of code that I hold the copyright exclusively, I would consider releasing a version under GPL, but not BSD. The reason is simple, I can still create derivitive works under whatever license I choose, but if I choose BSD, then my competiters can do the same thing.
It is clear that a lot of people just don't get this. Yes, GPL is more restrictive, but that is a good thing and it protects the original owner of the copyright as well by keeping derivitives free and open.
everybody here, of course, remembers that, historically, the "southern democrat" held all the power of the south, and Lincoln was a republican.
The roles have certainly changed (well appeared to change,) over the years, but the southern democrat still exists.
it makes me tempted to register as a whig.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Software doesn't kill people, people kill people.
People don't kill people... Heart failure kills people
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Now consider how tiny the NSF and NASA are in the grand scheme of things. Consider all the software written for a much larger agency like the US Navy. Think you will ever see any chunk of the Yorktown's propulsion system software? Not m a chance, but think of how huge a project that was. Now consider all the Navy's work from design to implementiation. Now consider that the Navy is just one branch of the enormous US Military, which literally supports whole cities of people on land and at sea. Then consider that the US Military only accounts for one fourth of the US Federal Budget and realize how much software goes to the federal government each year that you will never see, but will pay for again and again.
Very little can be thought of as vast but visible next to the incomprehsibly large.
Darn those academicians who seek to educate and otherwise benifit the public by frank and honest publications! Public libraries, hurt publishers. Free software hurts software vendors who would sell us the same crap forever. Yep, they love the GPL. So should the rest of us.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Under the provision, those who supported the GPL could still use the code in their own work. However, the code would not be "poisoned" such that businesses and individual programmers would lose their own work, and the rewards from it, if they used it.
The argument that the provision was necessarily evil because Microsoft might have supported it is likewise a "straw man" argument. Many people, including Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly and Associates, strongly support the use of truly free licenses such as the BSD license on the products of government research.
Yet, we saw a tremendous amount of energy expended to defend -- what? Not open source; the licenses recommended by the proposed provision were open source. The FSF? The FSF, which is flush with money and owns more code than Microsoft, hardly needs defending. Alas, the only purpose that this uproar may have accomplished is to make it possible for code to be locked away from the people who paid for its development. Not good.
--Brett Glass
(*) The GPL violates the Open Source Definition because it discriminates against a field of endeavor -- the creation of commercial software -- and against a class of individuals -- the people who write that software.
In the case of GPLing a BSD licensed piece of code, it would have to be a modified version of the GPL to take into account the original requirements of the BSD license - that attribution must be given in the documentation and that the BSD copyright notices must not be removed from the source. The BSD license allows you to add restrictions, but you may not remove the ones that were there.
So far as I know, more lawsuits have been filed in defense of the BSD license than the GPL so far. :-)
You are clearly a troll, but your post is a good springboard for two important memes.
.sig points out, a nonviral guarantee of *your* freedom to restrict the freedoms of everyone else. In this way, it's more like a freedom annhilator than a freedom virus.
1. GPL is a vaccine against proprietary vendor lock-in. It ensures that once code has been released for public use, it is not extinguished by proprietary extensions that render the original obsolete. This benefits all players, from free software purveyors to large commercial companies. Ask IBM.
2. The BSD license allows you to do whatever you like, for good or for ill. It is, as my
The more people who are vaccinated against a contagious disease, the fewer people will catch it. GPL is definitely a vaccine rather than a virus.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
" The problem is that some systems should never be made public. I don't want the command computer source code for the ICBM system running around loose "
Somehow this raises in my mind a compelling visual image of a huge stack of fanfold paper splitting in two to make pseudo-legs and literally "running" around.
But, more seriously, there are very few instances in which this kind of "keep it secret to keep it safe" reasoning makes sense (to me). This doesn't seem like one - while I can imagine possible problems with "bad guys" getting the code, few of them seem sufficiently compelling to require locking the code down tight.
Indeed, the notion of "security through obscurity" (SETHROB) is so seriously flawed that any time it (or something close to it) is suggested, serious questions about the whole business should be raised. Specifically, SETHROB is very often used to hide the fact that the thing being kept obscure contains serious problems - and it is those problems that require the shroud of obscurity.
Worse yet, SETHROB is a convenient thing for those who do not understand the problem to toss in to the solution - and they thereby convince themselves that the problems are all solved. Toss in a way to punish those who try to point out the problems for violating the security involved and suddenly you not only fail to solve the problems, but you make it difficult, if not impossible, to even consider the process of finding workable solutions.
Should all information be public? Thats absurd (although in some relatively theoretical sense it may not be). But using governmental secrecy and obscurity to protect things at the drop of a hat (a common enough reflex in them hollowed halls) is equally absurd and every time someone says its a good thing, we should all ask why - and require a bit of convincing.
tells me enough to know not to read your post
you should put your keyboard under your pillow tonight and pray for the clue-fairy to sprinkle a little insight in your ear.
I don't feel that the government should GPL all its code on principle. But should the government be forbidden to make modifications to a mature GPL software project if that software fills the requirements of some particular project? Imagine that the government wants to use Linux for a particular application, because they feel it's the best tool for the job-- should they be forbidden from adapting it to suit their particular needs (as companies like Tivo have), or even releasing bug-fixes?
It strikes me that in many cases the public and the government can both benefit from this sort of transaction. It's certainly far more efficient than the typical "pay a contractor to develop something and then let them retain the copyright" scenario.
Most americans that know about such things think it's intolerable corruption also.
American politicians get rich by corporate backscratching; this has gone on as long as we've been a country, Tammany hall, with boss tweed as villan, is but one notorious example. (no, I'm not making that up.)
Every so often, the people get tired of their shit, and a major housecleaning takes place.
We are approaching one of those times, and the way these kind of stories suddenly expand is a symptom of how pissed off in general that the public is; it resonates and builds until something happens.
My personal belief is that the HDTV bs that is being pushed is going to precipitate the big change. When the public can't record a popular show, because it's encrypted, shit will change.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
In Germany we started an grassroot movement to get Linux in the national parliament's administration. A strong media success by bundestux. Also Linux only was introduced on the server, the movement created some steps in the institution. Media coverage was overwhelming. Microsft paid a PR agency Hunzinger a (6 digit) payment for lobbying against Linux. However Hunzinger failed and caused German Minister of Defense Scharping and Green Party politician Oezdemir to go.
Frankly, I think the government's purchasing requirements across the board should be altered such that they can only purchase public domain software. Having as much money as they do, they will continue to attract contractors willing to accept this as a condition, just as equally as if the government decided all of the software it purchased had to come on 8 inch floppies.
Copyright exists SOLELY to promote the progress of the arts by providing creators with an incentive to create in the form of a limitation on everyone else in what they can do with the work for a certain period, the general idea being that this satisfies quickly the public's desire for new works, and then will later satisfy the public's equal desire for freedom to do stuff with those works, including making new works from them. (phew)
The government needs no such incentive. Their incentive is proper governance. It is improper for them to get copyrights. And as long as they're spending our tax dollars on software, it should be of the greatest public benefit possible. This means the public domain.
Then anyone can use that software to do anything. Some people may create closed software, some open, but that's okay. Because it is FREE TO ALL.
If you want government to promote openess, which I agree with (I am a GPL supporter, though it is wholly inappropriate wrt government), a better way would be to require openess as a prerequisite for copyrighting a work! I.e. that MS could not get a copyright on the next Windows unless the source and enough comments to make it useful to people later, were put on file at the Library of Congress.
You couldn't immediately use that -- it is copyrighted -- but at least you could look at it and learn from it, in the same way that you can look and learn from a novel, or pretty much anything else that is copyrighted.
If even further openess is required, this would require even more significant changes to copyright law, but I think that it is generally acceptable for there to be an area of closedness if it doesn't present too significant an impairment to the promotion of the arts and sciences.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Forcing the government to release code under GPL is *removing* competition from the market. Public domain is much better. The code can be taken up by private companies and they can improve and sell it.
Gee, Red Hat seems to make a fair amount of money taking GPL code, improving it, and then selling it...
Needless to say, I disagree. The best license for taxpayer-funded code is the GPL -- that allows any and everyone to take the code and use/improve it, and it guarantees the code's freedom, both in the present and in the future.
though.
.gov, then gets to turn around and sell that db commercially.
Say IBM gets a 100million $ contract to write a killler database for
So Oracle (& MySQL AB) gets to help pay for code for a competitor?
Seems more fair & logical to release all publically funded code under an open license so that all the folks who have supported the writing of the code can use it.
You seem to be arguing that one counter example proves the case.
But public domain allows many Red Hat's, and also other companies.
There are a number of specialized research tools that were released public domain and have since been picked up and made into proprietary products. If that had not been done, it is likely that most of those tools would now only work in some long obsolete computer running against non-portable libraries.
Let's look at your claims for GPL:
anyone can take it and improve it. Yep, same with public domain.
Guarantee's code freedom. Since when was code a human being? What is "code freedom?" Do you mean that it guarantees that nobody can take the code, invest huge amounts of effort in it, and then recoup their investment by selling it as proprietary? Yep - it PREFVENTS that. In other words, it reduces the ways in which that code can benefit users!
GPL means reduced options! Otherwise it wouldn't preclude some of them in the license!
GPL is good for some things, but to assert it is good for all is equivalent to asserting that capitalism in software never produces anything of value!
The only good weather is bad weather.
Security through obscurity doesn't work. Ask Microsoft.
But obscurity can help security. Ask the NSA.
Security through openness also only works when defects can be corrected in a timely manner. This is the case with most systems, but not all, and systems for which it is known in advance that modifications to fielded units will not be possible should use obscurity as an added layer of protection (on top of well-designed and implemented security).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The issue is that government contractors should be forced to license the software to the government under the GPL.
Actually the issue is that if your government contracts to have some code developed the GPL should be an allowable licence.
Australian? Join EFA
I like the license of wxWindows more than BSD or plain GPL, and it is another alternative to those being discussed here.
It basically consists of full GPL protection for source code, but with the freedom of use any licensing in binaries, that is, permiting commercial use of it. Developers happy, and companies happy.
As in everything, all extremes are evil, and for me the RMS/GPL is just the other extreme of MS EULAs. Any good and usefull license should be somewhere in the middle of them both. Of course the devil is in the details, but that's what lawyers are for.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Also your argument applies to BSD or Public Domain code, which most people here assumme are the only alternatives to GPL for the government-produced code. All the options are open to examination.
From what I have heard, the federal goverment must BSD or public domain any code it produces itself entirely. This is because it is not allowed to copyright anything it produces, and the lack of copyright makes the GPL irrelevant (since it simply grants a few exceptions to the copyright but less than making there be no copyright).
However the government should be allowed to use GPL code and modify it. The result is then GPL, because that is part of the rules of the GPL, which even the government cannot break (the government is also allowed to use Windows in their solution but that does not make Windows suddenly free). For that reason I very much oppose this idea, as it's entire purpose is to outlaw the use of GPL software in government.
Ya know, sometimes slashdot really pisses me off. I submitted the following and it got rejected:
-----BEGIN-------
2002-10-25 07:19:11 TacLUG delegation to visit Congressman Adam Smith (articles,news) (rejected)
My name is Chuck Wolber and I am the president of the Tacoma Linux Users Group. I also happen to live in Adam Smith's voting district. We have secured an appointment to see him in person on Monday October 28, 2002 at 11:30am regarding his letter
on the GPL as it applies to commercial use of government funded "innovation". We are trying to prepare as much as possible for this visit and wish to solicit the viewpoint of the greater OSS community. Our plan so far is to clarify and correct any misconceptions he may have while at the same time giving him a fair shot at stating his position for the record. What approach do you believe is the most effective way to get the point across that the GPL stimulates innovation rather than hurts it?
------END------
So anyway, we going to talk to da man himself to get things straightened out. If you have any input or angles you think we should consider, please feel free to start a dialog below...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Let me start by saying I have strong libertarian tendencies, but find that the Libertarian Party doesn't really get us to libertarianism ever, partly because (in my mind) of a lot of impracticality.
So... if we can't be libertarian, what's the second best alternative? In that case, I tend to say the next best alternative is that one man should not be enslaving another through the law (The Law, an excellent work). But that, in turn, means "pay as you go", or "fee for service".
Let's face it -- the government cannot do all these things for free. Someone has to pay, and it usually comes out in the form of taxes. But just because there are some things that we cannot push over into "fee for service" (welfare, for example... all we can do is eliminate it or turn it into voluntary social insurance) or cannot convert easily (national defense; should that be a property tax or a head tax?) doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to allocate costs to the beneficiary.
In this case, we should consider that the production of software *can* pay for itself if it is licensed, at least until it has paid for itself.
Therefore, I would suggest that much better than advocating GPL, we should advocate an "approaching GPL" position. That is, the cost of producing the software is totted up. At that point, the government sets a licensing fee. When the total fees paid for that software reach the cost of production (inflation-adjusted and interest-rate-adjusted), then the software immediately becomes GPL'd.
That way, if a company wants rights to use the software, they can pay -- and for a while, have something that is semi-proprietary. But if the Linux crowd wants it, they can simply pay the difference, and immediately port it into Linux.
Anyhow, we do DTP, but if we ever do get into software, that is how I intend to run things (with a modest profit included, since we are a business).
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It's easy to argue that millitary software should be free. If you compare the quality of free software to that of comercial software in actual performance, you have to conclude that free software is superior. See here for a dramatic example of high profile, high visiblity, and high risk software. Would you send people into battle with second rate goods? Not me. If you took the time to follow that Yorktown link you will find a ship that had to be towed back to port because it's NT system failed when a sailor input a 0, which the program devided by and then took down the local OS which disabled the entire propusion system of the ship. Contrary to your belief, software for a Yorktown class ship can be used for any ship. Well designed software is modular and takes parameters to make it fit specific systems. That is why the BSD and linux have been ported to so many different types of computers, from embeded systems to Los Alamos supercomputer. Externaly, the systems are completely different, but closer inspection reveals common features. A turbine is a turbine and the software to control it should be able to work with any turbine with a few paramiter changes.
The sabotage threat is silly. First, free software is more resiliant to such things. Second, if your enemy has gotten that far you have much greater problems than securing your computers.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
WRONG! You are confusing free as in speech with free as in beer. GPL is concerned with free as in speech not beer. GPL ensures that ALL users of a derived work will have access to the source code to modify.
GPL allows derivative works to be sold. GPL allows derivative works to be sold without redistribution rights. GPL simply ensures that derivative works, however they are distributed, keep access to the source code available to all users. When I buy any GPL derived work, I can demand and get the original source code to tweak and modify at will.
BSD does not do this. We know that Microsoft's code has large amounts of BSD licensed code int it. They have proabably made improvements to it and probably haven't improved other areas of the code. Can you see those improvements? Can you fix the flaws (that are probably fixed in other versions of the freely available code) in Microsoft's code? NO! I said this about a similar topic a while back:
The software and property analogy doesn't really work because property can't be forked.
EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Thus, it would appear that the US could modify the work for its internal use, but would not be able to distribute it without breaching the GPL.
Lawrence Lessig has some notes on the letter. His argument on why this rule would be bad comes down to
give GPL to democrats and give BSD to republicants (or vice versa). And wait for upcoming elections. Let the american people to decide what license to use in all software made by the goverment for people's money.
Less is more !
You are confusing free as in time with free as in beer.
BSD-licensed software is not merely released at no cost, it is released with no strings attached. This is free as in "free time" rather than "free beer" (a lot of proprietary software is released at no cost) or "free speech" (copyleft).
You said "Don't steal my code then". That's fine for your code and mine (despite the abuse of the software and property analogy concept of "stealing"), but I don't think it even makes sense to talk about taxpayers "stealing" government code, since they paid for it in the first place.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I'm not a GPL expert, but I believe there is no requirement to release the code? Only if you choose to release it you must also provide the source
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
But when Smith, whose biggest political contributor is Microsoft, began circulating the letter to his fellow Democrats asking for their signatures, he added his own correspondence saying the free software philosophy is "problematic and threaten(s) to undermine innovation and security."
Yep, them east coast mafia coders up their trying to guard them rich folk's cash flows will always paint a picture that free software corrupts the "american way" of screwing ppl over alright!
That was the most horrific attempt at an argument I have ever heard in my life.
At no point, in that mindless, uncoordinated rambling, did you ever come to a single point.
People are acctually dumber after hearing that.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
The letter should have been withdrawn. The 'language' of the addition was almost exact MS language. If they had no part, which IMHO, I don't believe, then Smith made himself look rather inept. He used 'code developed' example of TCP/IP and that, developed by DARPA, it 'made the internet'. It wasn't the code relased, it was the PROTOCOL that they developed that made the internet, and as long as that was an 'open standard' it could be used by any entity to produce product, be it gpl'd code or commercial code. Heck, even IF gov't funds were used for actual code, it could be used the same way. They aren't going to produce code for linux and windows and macs and solaris and Z/os that use the same CODE. If they DID develop the actual code, the linux code could go out under GPL, the windows code 'licensed' code, etc. The whole thing simply makes it look to me like they had no idea what they were talking about, IMHO, but just listening to their funding source and going for those last minute contributions before the mid term elections. Just my opinion, I could be wrong (TM Dennis Miller).
"in some countries, that would be seen as intolerable corruption."
While in others it would catapult you to the head of government. Just look at Italy and France!
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
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He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
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