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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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...with some software. I mean, look at it this way, a LOT of R&D and coding time can go into a piece of software and who better to fix the bugs and modify (in a positive manner) than the public. In addition to the fact that it won't cost the government shit to let the public find all the holes and patch them up so they don't have to [spend money doing so themselves].
So I guess the cliche applies here:
1. Government Funded GPL project
2. Unleash on public
3. ???
4. Profit!
Whether this is good or not, someone, within 30 comments of this post will post a jab at Bush.
schild
editor, f13.net
It should be public domain, without any restrictions on its use.
That is part of the benifit of it being GPL'd. While the government is "involved" in the production of the software, once it has been released, the only way they have more control over it than anyone else is that they own the copyright. And DRM under GPL liscensing is impractical enought to be funny.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Why?
The article talks about the government releasing software under the GPL, and not about government intervention in GNU/GPL projects.
/rant
In many cases, assuming the software is not proprietary, the work is available to the whole government for unlimited use and it falls under the public domain. Public domain materials can be requested by anyone...
Please READ before you post. It's very frustrating to see posts exactly opposite the subject of the article.
What about SELinux? I belive the NSA paid for its development and it is GPL'd.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
GPL favors some forms of businesses over other forms, and thus causes marketplace bias; public domain (no copyright at all) is the traditional, and best option for government.
How is this going to work? Its hard to think of situations in which the federal government would have a need for DRM. What argument are they going to use for putting DRM into GNU software? And how are they going to implement it? At worst, they could say they won't use FLOSS software for particular purposes without DRM. They can't actually control FLOSS software without major changes in copyright law that would be hard to target at FLOSS.
It seems to me that government release of software under the GPL is a big win for the FLOSS movement, and not just because its an additional adopter of the model. This provides a unifiying force between left wing and libertarian advocates of FLOSS and those conservatives who are not in the pockets of big corporations. That kind of conservative often views the federal government as a big ripoff. Releasing government software under the GPL gives back to the people.
ie public domain but you must give credit in the source code?
I know most people are in love with the GPL
but the government stuff is free...id rather just let users use it free while ensuring that it was not appropriated or falsely credited to a private company.
Companies pay taxes as well. If this were released into the public domain, or with a less laden license such as the BSDL, then both profit and non profit users would have the same starting position and no advantage over each other. Since companies help fund this, why shouldnt they be allowed to use the code in a closed manner? It doesnt diminish the value of the origional code release, and allows the funders to make use of it in a way that isnt dictated to them.
You are absolutely right. But if the government can get around this with closed-source by contracting things out, you'll have to forgive me if I don't shed a tear if they do the same with open-source software.
But can't this be said about public domain as well? In that case businesses take GPL code that all people paid for, modify it, profit from selling the binaries of the derivative and (possibly) not disclosing their new source? If businesses don't cooperate, people and the government then lose money. GPL then would be better for government and the people. I'll stick to the FSF on this: GPL gives better protection, unless there is a specific reason to opt for LGPL or public domain.
As the article states, the government is supposed to be required to put out code in the 'public domain', it appears they had to use a loophole in the law to get this done.
Perhaps an exception for the LGPL would work here. The code could be used with commericial products while still keeping with the copy-left philosophy.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I don't get to put "license restrictions" on the taxes I pay, so the government should not be allowed to put license restrictions on code it develops with those taxes.
The GPL is fine for private authors to adopt if that's what they prefer, but it should have no place in the public sector. As another poster points out, it unfairly favors some users over others.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
should be free. It should be free without any restrictions on its use.
In that case businesses take GPL code that all people paid for, modify it, profit from selling the binaries of the derivative and (possibly) not disclosing their new source? If businesses don't cooperate, people and the government then lose money
No. The decision to GPL or not GPL a piece of publicly-funded code should not be based on an expectation of future earnings from that code.
If it is, then the code should be developed (and funded) by the private sector, not the public sector.
Yeah but firstly, the US government aids and abets proprietary software, which is much MORE restrictive than the GPL, so whining about the GPL without complaining about them is major-league hypocritical, and secondly, the GPL doesn't stop anyone profiting from the software, including companies, it just stops people profiting with certain types of business model that abuse people's freedom.
"Keeping the code under the GPL keeps a large segment of the public who paid for it (corporations looking to sell proprietary software) from using it."
Do you mean corporations looking to sell proprietary software such as Cisco & Microsoft, who pay no federal income tax?Many works of the US Gov't, the CIA, etc. are in the public domain, whilst I am a big beleiver in the GPL, I think it would be fairer for Tax-funded software to be in public domain.
Granted, the GPL doesn't actually prohibit MegaCorp(TM) from using it, but most MegeCorp's business plans are not (yet) GPL-compatible. Although, maybe if this large body of Gov't GPL software was approaching ubiquity for whatever it does, this may encourage MCs to accept it.
Windows is only $500 if your time is worthless.
If it were public domain a developer could create a derivative work and release that under whatever license they wanted. Additionally, Microsoft could include bits of the code in the next version of Windows and not have to disclose the rest of the Windows source.
It does not unfairly favor any users, just certain uses. These uses are fundamentally antisocial and ought to be discouraged whenever possible.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why is software different from a road surface, or from police and fire protection? I payed for those, and I expect them to be available to me in the normal order of things. Companies exploit that fact for profit all the time. Why is code different?
Wow, it sounds like you think its unpatriotic to release code under a license that doesn't restrict uses to the US.
How might things have turned out differently if those foreigners that started the Linux kernel, Mysql, OpenBSD, Python, Ruby, KDE, Mplayer, etc had said the same thing about letting American's profit off of their software.
Just this week a local government department released an RFP for a high-value (>CAD$50k) project which requires exactly what EZRO offers. Odd, isn't it?
In the answer to this RFP, you must indicate if your solution already implements a series of features, or whether it can be accomplished in the next 3 months. So that's 3 months and at least $50k to add features to an OSS project...
It seems very odd to me that we should insist that it is the government that should release the software, when it is much simpler to sell them modifications to software that's already open.
I'm not 100% clear how to accomplish that goal yet.
Looking for RFP's to bid on doesn't give you much time to research existing projects and get used to the codebase and start contributing features. Trying to get a good comparison of various projects -assuming you managed to find enough to compare- is often like trying to understand theological arguments.
Alternatively, you could just specialize in or start an OSS project that you knew was going to be needed by many agencies (Collision information management system, electronic medical record...), get a team together and bid on all RFPs on the subject, starting with the ones requiring the least features/customization.
Either way, there are low-hanging fruits here where we can underbid the commercial vendors with technically superior solutions.
Has anyone tried this kind of approach? Are there any domains you know that are ripe for an OS solution?
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
I didn't say anything about them useing GPLd code IN proprietary software, and neither did you in the post I was replying to. I said that proprietary software company can, and do, use GPLd code. I would add that they can use it for exactly the same range of things on exactly the same terms as anyone else.
umm, actually if AOL wanted to replace AIM with a pay service, they could still use an open protocol and open software, nothing prevents them from having paid account verification, If knowing how the software worked meant automatic access to the network, the network is really fucking insecure
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
They can use it on exactly the same terms as everyone else. There is no sense in which they are being dsciminated against.
You might as well say that the government releasing a C compiler, under any license, is discriminating against people who don't program in C. Or that the government building roads is discriminating against people who don't have drive cars.
Government paves a road. Private firm comes along and paints diamonds on one lane of that road....and tells you that you can no longer use the "SPECIAL LANE" without paying. GPL > BSD style for govt funded projects.....if the *base* of the code was government funded, derivative projects shouldn't be closed.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
I repeast, no, they cannot use it in their product while the OSS developer can.
"Or that the government building roads is discriminating against people who don't have drive cars."
The reason we let the government help build roads despite that fact is because there is no viable alternative way to get the job done. That is not the case with software development. They could easily have released the code for everyone to use.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
If it was totally free, then someone could instantly take it and GPL a slightly changed version. So you still would get a GPL one.
But I think this is because they would like anyone who uses it to add to it. It's to make sure public property stays public.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
It was my understanding that the Federeal government generally can't copyright things. Assume for the sake of argument that this is correct. Then the question that instantly comes to mind is the following: if the government can't copyright something, then when it makes a derivative work, it can't release it under the GPL. To use GPL'ed code you must agree to license your derivative work under the GPL if you release it. However, if you can't coyright the work, you can't release it under a license. Since you can't release you are not given permission to use the original work in the first place.
Thus if we assume that the Federal government can't copyright a work. The conclusion is that it can't take GPL'd code and modify it since it can't follow the license terms of the original work.
The logic goes a bit like this:
For the sake of this argument, assume a better analogy -- a ladder and a series of pulleys. Every step you climb up the latter costs (something) and use of the pully is free. The government pays to have a pully hung at a certain level, and everyone may use that pully for free. In a BSD style license, a company may use the government pully and then climb the ladder a bit, setting their own pully and charging for use to that higher level. In the GPL style license, pulleys hung after using a free govt-derived pully must also have no cost.
Now, in this scenario, taxpayers fund the hanging of the first pully, for public use. But a company has a profit motive and wants to invest a little to get good results, so they use the first pully, climb a bit, and hang a new one. [Note: This metaphor encapsulates many of the dual-licensing schemes -- gpl & commercial use for proprietary product] They haven't paid back the taxpayers for their use of the pully. If the first govt hung pully had NOT been free, the company would have had to pay -- and taxpayers aren't being passed those savings. In short, the marginal investment of climbing a few steps is nothing without the prior [free] public investment....and as such, they shouldn't be able to charge for them.
[The typical retort is that "thit just shows how the GPL is viral, and that a few lines of GPL code can take over a huge project." If you have a huge project with thousands of lines of code, and you are incapable of writing your own proprietary 3 line solution to do the same thing as some GPL'd code, then you deserve to go bankrupt. ]
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
If taxpayer dollars support software development, it should be released to the public domain, without the additional restrictions imposed by the GPL. People should be able to modify and sell the code without having to release their modified source.
Vote for Pedro
How is this a troll? The govt. shouldn't be spending taxpayer money on sw, and then putting arbitrary restrictions on how the sw is released, just because socialists like RMS think it's a good idea. I second the parent, only BSD style licensing please. Any ture libertarian will agree as well (assuming they even thing the govt. should be spending money developing sw in the 1st place).
Vote for Pedro
Companies pay taxes as well.
No they don't. Really. At first glance, it may appear that companies pay taxes but they really don't.
In fact, it is their customers that pay the taxes as part of the final price, the company is just a middleman.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Anyone can use GPL software, but not everyone may be able to profit from it. Think about roads maintained by taxes. Anyone can drive over them, but corporations cannot charge tolls on people who use them.
Why should corporations have the sacred right to get profits from software developed for the government, but not from roads built for the government?
If tas payers fund a government body that creates some code, why should they use a license that requires that anyone else release their changes freely? Did not those corporations that might want to use the code pay taxes as well? Public domain is the fairest way for everyone to play ball.
No, that is not "fair" - it is biased towards the corporations.
If something was created with public money, why should the private sector be allowed to appropriate it? Isn't it quite appropriate (har har) for software developed by tax money to carry a license that ensures that it can only be used in ways which benefit everyone who paid for its development?
Agreed. And the GPL is what makes sure that it will stay in the public domain. Releasing software without the GPL will let anyone convert, with minor modifications, a software from public domain to proprietary. Where in the Constitution is it written that tax money should be used to give profit to corporations? If the corporations don't want to cope with the GPL they are free to write from scratch their own software. But they may also use the GPL software released by the government on the same basis as everyone else. How's that for a "fair way" for everyone to play ball?
What you say makes sense only because you didn't quote the whole of my post. The example I was talking about involved AOL distributing the "enhanced" chat application to all of their customers. So obviously they would have to distribute their new source. If they only intended to use it in-house it wouldn't make the slightest difference whether they used the GPL or some othe licence.
And, having had the cheek to correct me by quoting me out of context, you then go ahead and say something which is "patently" incorrect:
They are not obliged to make their sources available to anyone other than the people they have distributed their binaries to. They can't restrict the re-distribution of the source to people who are not customers, but it is not their responsibility supply the source to anyone else.
In future, please read the post you are responding to, and don't quote out of context in order to make some pettifogging (and incorrect) point. Thanks.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
There is no possible way for a business that simply offers a product to abuse your freedom.
What if they offer a product that, in its production, contaminates your local streams and lakes?
What if they offer organs... harvested from people they kidnapped?
What if their product is a now-copyrighted television program that used to be public domain, until the new law recently mentioned that says re-broadcasting something in the PD makes you the new copyright holder automatically?
What if they offer DNA profiles, after buying the national "arrested (but not convicted) people DNA" database?
What if they offer voyeuristic movies of you?
What if they offer "protection", mob-style?
What if they offer bottled water, after purposely fouling the local drinking water to make it unpotable?
What if they offer "purified" water that is actually contaminated?
What if they offered a (working) mind-control device?
What if the government passed a draconian law and they offered the technology to implement it?
Then it isn't being in the spirit of the GPL anymore, and what would be the point of releasing under the GPL in the first place? where is the benfit to the government of going to all this trouble if they could just place arbitary restrictions in the first place without the GPL hassle?
As for some posters comments about granting companies, who are also taxpayers, the same benefits as everyone else, I believe the GPL does that just fine. Under the GPL they have the same rights to use, modify, and distribute as individuals do. It just prevents them from gaining any special advantages compared to individual taxpayers or even other companies. And while PD would not prevent individuals from comitting such abuses, it would still produce a very unlevel playing field because large corporations are in an inherently better position to benefit from such practices.
So I believe that GPL is a much better choice for Government developed software than PD or BSD style licenses. Being able to reap some of the benefits of your tax dollars is good. Being able to destroy the value of those benefits for all other taxpayers is not.
"There is no possible way for a business that simply offers a product to abuse your freedom. If you don't like what they offer, you can always go somewhere else."
Well I differ with you on what constitutes an abusive relationship. An abusive relationship isn't one which the weaker party can't necessarily escape from, but one where one party holds far more power than the other - if you can leave the relationship, but at a grave cost, such as never being able to use a computer at all, then that's an abusive relationship.
As an analogy, people were often 'free' to be christians in the Warsaw pact countries during the cold war. However, being an active christian was likely to involve state surveillance and harassment such as being denied job promotions or whatever. By your definition of the term 'abuse', however, that wasn't abusive. People did actually have a choice. They could chose between foregoing their beliefs or being harassed. According to you, that's not abusive.
(There were, of course, worse crimes committed against christians in the eastern bloc - those are irrelevant for this particular argument)
Being told that you MUST use proprietary software, or not use a computer at all (which was the case before about 1991 or so) is an abuse of power, even though it isn't outright coercion. Being told that you must have DRM-enabled software, that you must dial up microsoft.com or whoever and be spied on every time you switch your computer on, being denied the right to look at or change the software on 'your' computer, and being made to fork out large sums of cash every 3 years or so in order for your computer to be able to talk to the rest of the world IS an abuse.
It only stops being abusive when we DO have a reasonable choice without being, in this case, ostracised, economically speaking. If free software is killed, (it won't just die a natural death, patent laws or DRM-type legislation, or the annulment of the GPL, or some sort of hardware restrictions will be needed to kill it) then we'll go back to your fairly stark, 'non-abusive' choice - either be subjected to proprietary handcuffs and surveillance, or never use a computer again, and be effectively ignored by the rest of the world.
This was the case before 1991 or so, but then, the economic consequenses of not having a computer were less severe than they are now. We're very, very, lucky to have a real and fair choice now, and it was only made possible by the creation of the GPL.
"Your arguement is irrational.
I'm not irrational, I just disagree with you on what certain words mean.
"The only abuse of freedom is that of the govt. by restricting what taxpayers can do with software they paid for."
I'm glad to see you're opposed to government funding and support of proprietary software.
Absolute balderdash. Government software should be in the public domain. Here's why:
First of all, companies paid for the software too through taxes. I don't understand why you think that they should be prevented from ADDING VALUE to the software and reselling it. It's not that the company is STEALING the software from the people; the people still have exactly the software that the government created. But when companies ADD VALUE, they should be able to sell that ADDED VALUE at the market price. If they try to sell it at too high a price, then a competitor will enter the market. Or perhaps the government should have finished the job the first time, if they're really releasing the software for the common good. If the government had done a good enough job in the first place, then nobody would pay for the ADDED VALUE.
Secondly, the GPL discourages companies from ADDING VALUE. Without the ability to sell the software at market price, companies have absolutely no incentive to improve upon the government's work to make it more useful to the whole of society. Users of software cannot afford to do inhouse development to fix the GPLed software's problems, and for the types of the software that the government is likely to release, there will probably be no giant community willing to chip in either. Therefore, it makes sense to allow companies to profit by ADDING VALUE to the software, since that makes everyone better off in the end.
I cannot overstate the issue: the GPL does not guarantee that people will ADD VALUE to software, especially in special-purpose software. The public domain allows people to copyright changes, which in turn provides an incentive to ADD VALUE. And finally, companies can only charge as much as the ADDED VALUE is worth; otherwise, people will use the public domain software as-is.
Thus, placing government software in the public domain will better serve the public as a whole.
That's bullshit.
Let's consider some non-GPL software like FreeBSD. Nokia and Juniper use FreeBSD in their routers. Have FreeBSD became proprietary? No. Are Nokia and Juniper's FreeBSD versions proprietary - yes. They are different OSes because of proprietary software included. Just consider them as branches.
BTW tax money were used to write software to use by government. If the same software might benefit somebody else it is even better. And I say it is good corporations make money from whatever software they use because emploeyes and stockholders also people.
And question for you - do you believe that GPLed software can't be used to give profits to corporations? So those Linux crowds who swear by Linux companies are wrong? ;)))
If america starts releasing specialised BSD software with the restriction that it can only be used in the USA; angry finnish programers will release all there code specifically that it cannot be used in the USA; it's not a good soluiton.
Having said that- I do think that a BSD styled release would be best- this way companies searching for a profit stream can use it as well; but have to at least admit that they did.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
Our government has increasingly over the last serveral decades lost sight of itself as an essential service. That is, a necessary evil, that needs to be pruned within an inch of it's life on a regular basis, and who's only reason for existence is the ability to provide certain global services in a method and manner more cost effective and efficiently than 50 smaller institutions tiled over the face of our nation.
Producing, using, and supporting GPLed software is precisely the kind of behavior one would hope from a government which was, benevolent, transparent, committed to providing superior service to it's citizens, and working towards a growing common resource that each and every citizen could use and prosper from. Nothing could be more democratic, and nothing could improve our current society more than loosening the grip of special interests.
Let our government be a service to all it's citizens. Promote a future that insures the value of the commons, and promotes the health and happiness of the common man.
Genda
Many people would keep modifications under the GPL because they believe in it.
The GPL version would be likely to rapidly become better than the original.
I meant modified code.
Sorry for unintentionally speaking nonsense.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.