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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 all drugs have to be free...I just said that those developed through public funding. Companies are free to patent drugs they developed and funded themselves. Why should the government interfere with the free market?
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.
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)
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?
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?
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.
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? ;)))
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