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Government-Funded GPL Software
tgw writes "Tom Adelstein has an article in 'Linux Journal' on how a major milestone in US government-funded OSS recently passed - virtually unnoticed." Slashdot has mentioned this company earlier.
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But I couldn't figure out what this guy's software actually does. Anyone?
There's also a pragmatic reason to favour GPL. Many OSS developers prefer GPL to BSD, and therefore you are more likely to get fixes if you release under GPL. Besdies which, it's a myth that GPL harms "commercial developers" - indeed they cannot take modifications closed, but they can certainly benefit from the use of the product, and they can even sell it.
The first GPL required US government funded project I know of is the NYU GNAT project which is an Ada GCC front-end, see History in Wikipedia
This was back in 1994 or some such.
Laurent
laurent@guerby.net
Far better to use the GPL. If AOL wants to use the SW they paid for, they can do so. If they want to improve it, they can do that too, but they must distribute their source, so they can't create a huge "incompatibilty-hole" amongst the people who originally paid to produce the software.
This is patently incorrect. If they want to use (in any way, shape or (modified) form) GPL-ed software, they can do so without restriction. However, if they distribute it to someone who is not in-house, and have made modifications, they must also make the source available to them (and for that matter, to anyone else).
I hate it when people assist in the sullying of the GPL name when they attempt to defend it.
The previous sig has been removed due to
Let me get this straight -
You want inefficient and wasteful government solely for the benefit of computer programmers that work at Closed-Source houses?
About 2% of the employed population of the US works in "Computer and Mathamatical Science" jobs. Pare that down to the number that work for the government, get rid of the "Mathamatical Science" jobs, and you should be well less than a percent.
Your inability to cope shouldn't stand in the way of progress.
Also, what is so bad about paying taxes? Like it or not, the services are (mostly) needed. There's something inherently funny about Libertarians and people against the Government. (Originally from the Onion)
I think I need a new sig here.
Diebold software is not paid for by the U.S. government. Voting machines are purchased by state and/or local governments. The federal government doesn't pay for or control them. And the copyright limitations put on the U.S. government by the law cited don't apply to state and local governments.
I don't understand why this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. In fact, I suspect that the GPL license, may be too restrictive and not enforceable. US citizens have a right to receiving that code (and other information) in the public domain under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). (There are limits regarding national security, etc.) This has already been done with software in the past.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs has been actively developing and using the VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) software since the 1980's. This software has a proven track record and is used in hundreds of healthcare facilities of all sizes. Many agree that it is at least as good as multi-million dollar systems from companies like Siemens, GE, Cerner, and McKesson.
The VistA software has already been released to the public domain under the US Freedom of Information Act. Since then an active open source community has grown around that freely available code and is even being used in non-government facilities around the world. More recently the open source community and the VA developers have begun discussions on how to combine their efforts.
So if you know of any useful software developed by the US government, speak up and ask for it to be opened up so everyone can benefit!!