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Massachusetts Builds Open-Source Public Repository
An anonymous reader writes "Massachusetts on Wednesday took the wraps off a new software repository designed to let government agencies make more efficient use of open-source software. The repository will be managed by the Government Open Code Collaborative, a newly formed group of seven states and four municipalities that will contribute and download open-source software and proprietary software designed by government agencies for their use."
The ITD website has some really kewl stuff on it like a legal toolkit for using Open Source software. Press releases on the sit seem to indicate that Republican Governer Mitt Romney is behind the move to open source. He'll be getting my vote when he runs for re-election.
...this? It sounds like the same thing.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for another GForge installation... one more for the list!
The Army reading list
I wonder if other states could use it.
If so it would make it easier for them to
move to open source.
The is great. I suppose this might be a little "off topic" but I think it is due in no small part to the growing public awareness that has come about because of the SCO case. We are starting to see a much more critical eye from the press and public officials to FUD put out by anti-OOS pundits. This is in no small part to the fact that more than ever, the OSS position is more organized and sounds a lot less like a bunch of hippies frothing at the mouth against "big business". We (many of us) have known for a long time the benefits to society and by way of those that work in the Public Sector, bodies that are here to benefit society, the ideas behind OSS, but in the past these ideas have not been articulated in a way that is understandable to the non-geek, non-IT centered thought patterns. A good PowerPoint wouldn't hurt (joke). You have to tailor your arguments for your audience.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
As I understand it, the point is to make OSS more easily available to government agencies which should in theory save the state a sizeable chunk of money that might otherwise be spent on other software. The thinking is that OSS = cheaper = a good thing.
http://www.questionablecontent.net
"Government agencies looking to use the repository must sign a contract with the collaborative. This grants an agency a license to any open-source and proprietary software it finds in the repository and prohibits that software from being used to make a profit."
Im not suggesting this idea is a _bad_thing_, it looks like a worthy endeavour, but doesn't this restriction go against the underlying GPL. ??
That's a rather inane comment. People here are really just interested in one thing, when you get right down to it: being able to make software work the way they want it to behave. It seems that Massachusetts' CIO is also interested in seeing this happen. What is wrong or zealous about being happy to see a state government doing its part to use open source software and possibly lower costs and improve productivity in the process? If you don't like it, don't participate. There's no reason to troll or rain on everyone's parade.
"We are accountable for not only what we do, but also that which we don't do." -- Moliere
Government agencies looking to use the repository must sign a contract with the collaborative. This grants an agency a license to any open-source and proprietary software it finds in the repository and prohibits that software from being used to make a profit. This is a crucial component, since Massachusetts law prohibits commercial entities from making money off products developed by the commonwealth using taxpayer money.
The key words in the above are "prohibits that software from being used to make a profit". This means that any software they develop will either have to be done from scratch or from a very permissive license such as BSD, which allows the modification of the license of the code.
Furthermore, this license does not fall under The Open Source Definition or The Free Software Definition for this same reason.
Would there have been a Linux if the Government of Finland stepped in, instead of Linus & his bunch of highly caffeinated sharpshooters ?
I don't have a problem with government embracing OSS that is privately built using legions of programmers, because the programmers then have the incentive - fame ( in the OSS community), fortune ( ok, takes much longer to go IPO these days), hopefully both. But government managing OSS, where's the incentive ?
Before you call it a "good thing" did you ever stop and consider whether that statement is accurate?
Just because it's open source, it doesn't automatically make it more useful, or imply sufficient support, or even meet the specific needs of the government.
Hell, using OSS doesn't even mean that it is in fact cheaper! I work at a government institution and we have worked with free software. Sure, the software itself didn't cost us anything, but getting support for the piece of crap cost us (literally) millions.
The grandparent poster is RIGHT ON! Only blind zealotry can explain the knee-jerk "OSS IS ALWAYS GOOD!" reaction to these stories.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
gd.tuwien.ac.at
Well, as I see it, the government is directly involved with developing software. Well, since we are the government WE are paying for the development of software, and yet WE don't get access ot that source
Here's an example. The state of MN just wrote some software to help track the amount of salt that it uses during the winter time, allowing them to better track and order salt in a timely manner.
Who paid for that? Well, me, and a bunch of other Minnesotans. Well, don't cha think that Wisconsin, our happy go-lucky-badger-fearing state would LOVE to have the code? Sure WI could buy that package from MN, but I'll bet that Wisconsin will just go ahead, and reinvent that wheel. Government works like a business (but with a bit more transparancy) and most businesses are heavily involed with the NOT INVENTED HERE SYNDROME.
So WI and MN tax payers are paying twice what they need to. So, why not share the code? Chances are that WI will have projects that MN would want. Is it going to cut jobs? Probably not - it's just going to make things more efficent. Developers will still need to adapt the packages to the current environment.
We're paying to have this software developed - we might as well get a copy of it!
It sounds like you're joking, but just in case...
If you're worried about the government infecting open source projects with hidden code or something, then don't. It's open - that's the point. At the very worst, it would be on par with the proprietary software in use now. Hidden code would be seen.
Are you concerned that the government will screw up open source with bad management? So don't use software that is run by bad managers - simple solution. It's not like you don't have choices. If someone doesn't like the direction a government entity is taking a project, it will fork - not unlike the way things are now.
I just hope you don't get modded insightful as this sounds like one of those comments that gets insightful when it's anything but.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Did you notice that I qualified my statements with "in theory" and "the thinking is"? Of course OSS is not going to be cheaper in EVERY SINGLE SITUATION. In this case, however, a number of people who have clearly done quite a bit of research into it have decided that OSS could be cheaper in this particular situation. They think it worthwhile to establish a means of distributing it more easily among government agencies.
http://www.questionablecontent.net
Granted much of the software isn't as user-oriented, but that's not the point. The point is it is another government institution that has put real effort into making free software available to the public.
;)
http://fermitools.fnal.gov/
This is just one example I personally know of. Is this common at all? I'm too lazy to sift through every *.gov domain hunting for a software page.
Must sign a contract
Must use only stuff already in the repository
Can't ever make money - prohibited by diktat - so what's my incentive ?
Furthermore, how do you enforce these things ? If the repository is public, I could very easily take bits & pieces & repackage it as proprietary software & sell it, thus making money off products developed by the commonwealth using taxpayer money. If the repository is not public, then how is it open source ?
Seems overly complicated. Why doesn't the government of MA simply provide monetary incentives for programmers to contribute to existing repositories like sourceforge ? You could get things moving so much faster that way...or am I missing something here ?
Free / Open source software is an effective way of making sure that the people benefits from the development. It's the ultimate public service. A penny spent on FOSS is a penny earned in future projects and software for the masses, while a penny spent on proprietary software is merely a penny spent.
Lemon curry???
Ok if there is one thing about the state of MA. Every project with the word "government" begins with a budget and end with an infinite budget.
Just look at Big Dig, that thing is never going to finish. It's a political blackhole for sucking up $$$.
.. one of the huge problems for software developers is that so much of the money in software development goes to people who have relatively little if anything to do with software development. OSS will actually (IMHO) do more to correct this than any other business model.
The step the state is taking will actually allow more money to be targeted at solutions and less money to be given to people who understood how to legally "appropriate" others ideas. Lets face it, with the IP world going the way it is going, if the government does not step in actively to fight the Copyright Law the fed has created, it will become fiscally dangerous to write and release code.
If the governing bodies develop their own code base by paying internal people to write what they need, sharing and building upon the efforts of other similar bodies, not only will they evolve better standards (happens easier when you share code development), but we will wind up with more "fill in your state here" based coders. I am sure that outsourcing will happen with much of the development eventually, but they will still need internal brain trust to make it all work, and the code will be available for others to build upon. So, instead of paying forever for marginally valuable software, they pay once for targeted solutions that can be expanded, replaced or enhanced as they see fit. Then they only pay to enhance or fix what they have. Since the code base is shared by other government programmers (or actually is OSS), they gain the benefits of OSS at least to a limited degree. In the end, it will be less expensive, a better use of tax dollars and more productive at the user end.
Maybe the states can use the savings to improve the education system. How many other professions can you attend school for 12 years of you life and only expect to make 50k to 60k per year? Heck, my wife worked at a cosmetics counter selling Cli**que and made more money than a teacher with less than a few years experience.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
See, the last outfit I worked for, a private brokerage company, had 15,000+ employees scattered across a dozen cities. They wanted to do the SAME EXACT thing - "build and manage an OSS software repository". Same spiel - "We are using OSS all over the place, but each department has its own variant & version, so lets get together & pool our resources, build an internal repository of OSS & then manage it ourselves".
Guess what ? After a few months & a few hundred thousand dollars, the thing simply fell apart. The "department to build & manage OSS repository" was disbanded & people moved on.
Why ? Because folks in insurance wanted functionality that folks in mortgage didn't want that compliance wanted that legal didn't want that sysadmins wanted that webmasters didn't want that Perl hackers wanted that Java developers didn't want that....you get my point.
Different versions and variants exist because different people want different things. Trying to come up with a common software repository is just a pipedream.
Now, all the above happened in a PRIVATE company, where there are things like profit margins & paychecks - real incentive to make things happen. Imagine a government trying to "build and manage an OSS repository", with umpteen departments, terrific bereaucracy, and absolutely no commercial incentive. The mind boggles...
The reason is the Cost / Benefit of the two groups involved.
The benefactors of the program stands to gain a huge amount per member and as such is very motivated to Lobby and exercise Democratic rights for keeping the program.
The group paying (General Public) is large and the impact on each member is VERY small so they have little incentive to stop it through democtatic pressure. Result: No program ever dies.
The book is highly recommended.
Synopsis:
Democracy is not inherently good, Zakaria (From Wealth to Power) tells us in his thought-provoking and timely second book. It works in some situations and not others, and needs strong limits to function properly. The editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs takes us on a tour of democracy's deficiencies, beginning with the reminder that in 1933 Germans elected the Nazis. While most Western governments are both democratic and liberal-i.e., characterized by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic rights-the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Zakaria praises countries like Singapore, Chile and Mexico for liberalizing their economies first and then their political systems, and compares them to other Third World countries "that proclaimed themselves democracies immediately after their independence, while they were poor and unstable, [but] became dictatorships within a decade." But Zakaria contends that something has also gone wrong with democracy in America, which has descended into "a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness." The solution, Zakaria says, is more appointed bodies, like the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Supreme Court, which are effective precisely because they are insulated from political pressures. Zakaria provides a much-needed intellectual framework for many current foreign policy dilemmas, arguing that the United States should support a liberalizing dictator like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, be wary of an elected "thug" like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and take care to remake Afghanistan and Iraq into societies that are not merely democratic but free.
Help fight continental drift.
For many OSS proponents, it's not religious zeal. It's JOY ... joy over finally having a critical alternative to closed-source AND proprietary systems.
The world is attempting to wake up from the Microsoft Age -- the Nightmare, the Dark Ages of Information -- which have been filled with secrecy, hidden potholes and vast mistrust. DRM is coming like a chariot being whipped by Microsoft and media corporations, and it frankly hates you, the common man. It's coming to turn your computer into a television set (and if I have to explain to you what's so horrible about TV, then you're intellectually lost).
Some OSS repository in one state government is not hurting you at all. I'm sure Mass. has plenty of Microsoft, Oracle, etc. licences floating around. Now they have more choices. More alternatives. And this kind of thing is quite beneficial; after all, your government should be able to make data without having it held for ransom by a proprietary and closed provider.
I'm warning you now. If you reside in willful ignorance long enough, you become STUPID. Is that what you really wanted in your life?
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
The license being used by the repository is explicitly not GPL-compatible. It prohibits any commercial use of the code. This is a primary reason for setting up the repository, as commonwealth-produced software cannot (under the current system) be used by entities to make money, according to the article.
May we never see th