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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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Yes but how long before various forces demand DRM of varying forms be put in GNU software? Once the government gets involved then the people that control the government do as well.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
...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
Yeah, when I want security enhanced, I'll stick with tinfoil hat, thank you very much.
Help! I'm being repressed!
It should be public domain, without any restrictions on its use.
But now the Linux kernal will be rewritten in ADA!
Why?
What about hardware? I'd really love to try one of those F-22's....
I think that all publicly funded software (except that with a security concern) should be released under the GPL. The people paid to have it made, the people should be the ones to benefit from it.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
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.
or is it inexpressibly sad that this ISN'T a no-brainer? That so many people apparently have no problem with the government taking our tax money and using it to fund projects that never see the light of day? Whatever the government uses my money for, unless releasing it endangers national security, it SHOULD be released for the public to use. We paid for it, after all. And the private sector can undoubtedly come up with applications for it the government didn't think of. Everybody wins.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Govt should fund open source SW, as closed source SW vendors will use their power and money to create laws that will close down OSS. That is really the blind spot of libertarians, free traders, etc--they fail to see to see how the so-called "free maeket" is really just a license to allow wealthy entities (e.g., corporations, etc) to manipulate and control lesser entities (i.e., all the rest of us so-called "humans".) If we want an increasingly high standard of living, then we have to engineer a government that will give it to us. Govt is just a machine. Designing machines has NEVER been easy. There aint no such as a free lunch, and a free market is certainly no free lunch, although it comes pretty close to that for corporations and the wealthy and upper income class.
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
Is this story from the good Linux Journal or from its evil twin?
You're thinking of Linux Gazette. Or possibly Linux Today. I don't think Linux Journal has caught onto the trend for having an evil identity yet. Still it might be a good idea to start a boycott now and beat the rush when they do.
But I couldn't figure out what this guy's software actually does. Anyone?
If you take the position that software is a natural monopoly like the phone company used to be, then it only makes sense that it should be socialized rather than trying to regulate it into behaving (like they used to try to do with the phone company).
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.
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.
I wonder if the government would be willing to give a tax credit to programmers who submit bug-fixes or enhancements to their OSS software?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The best thing about the GPL is that it's simply not possible for a company to then exploit it without giving some benefit back to the people who paid for it. (And yes, I understand that companies pay taxes too). For example, the GPL prevents small, meaningless changes which simply change protocols without adding value.
Suppose you're a government funded researcher who produces some nice chat software which is placed into the public domain. What can stop AOL, which is a huge and influential company, from making a slight change to that software and then bundling it with AOL 10? If they bundle their new, incompatible chat software, they create a huge user-base without contributing anything. They could then leave it at that, or charge non-AOLers $10 if they want to be able to chat with their customers. You might argue that this is a good thing, but I think it's doubtful. And this approach isn't available to anyone except big SW companies.
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.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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.
Here's a quick /. mod guide:
MS software sucks (+1 informative)
MS software can be made relatively secure (-1 troll)
Bill Gates sucks donkey dick (+1 funny)
Bill gates donates money to the charity (-1 flamebait)
Posts about how we are controled by the big corporation (+1 insiteful)
Posts about breaking corporation by education and boycotts (-1 troll)
Posts about how the government should provide everything (+1 underrated)
Posts about some people needing to get off of their lazy asses to work (-1 overrated)
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
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
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.
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.
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!
if you ask Mr. McBride
my other sig is a commando
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?
There's an old Dilbert cartoon in which the boss says the workers are going to get money for each bug they fix.... Wally says "I'm gonna go code myself a car!"
There's no way anyone will get tax credits for fixing bugs.
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.
Anyways, here is MS's Annual Report which seems to state they paid nearly $5 billion in income taxes. Maybe you don't think $5 billion is that much, in which case can I borrow $20?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
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)
Yet another blind GPL fan boy.
And this is a bad thing why? What is so inherently evil about businesses that they shouldn't be allowed to use a business model that uses some code developed by the government and then freely released to all? If they wish, they can take that public domain code, make changes, and release it GPL if they wish. You have the same option. Of course, the public domain code would always be public domain, and thus entirely free; nothing can change that.
The one and only purpose of the GPL is to ensure that derivative works (plugins, models and the like) get an open source license (in this case the GPL). Is netcat any less free because it's public domain? Is OpenBSD any less free because it's licensed under a BSD license that allows companies to make derivative works and indeed distribute the original code in a binary only license?
There's a half truth going around about the GPL being viral and somehow infecting code you don't want to. We all know that's bull, but it's based in this truth. If you want to base a product on GPL code, you have to release any of your additions and modifications under the GPL as well, meaning you are giving away your code to the public. That's the price you knowingly pay up front for using GPL code (thus it isn't viral since you choose to use the available code, but later don't want to pay the price).
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.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
The GNU General Public License (GPL) was written years before there was an "open source" movement. Linking together the open source movement with the GPL misstates history and authorship. The language used in the GPL and the freedoms it talks about are not part of the philosophy of the open source movement, they are part of the free software movement which created the free software community we still enjoy today 20 years later. The real author of the GPL is the FSF (most notably, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen). In a post to the GCC mailing list responding to someone who wanted to help the "open source community", RMS said
ESR would similarly miscredit the open source movement when he referred to a number of programs as "open-source" projects even though they were written before that movement existed:
Maybe the authors of the various BSD OSes and the authors of the Linux kernal don't mind being lumped in with that movement, but ESR also includes Emacs which was co-written by RMS, founder of the free software movement. Emacs was most certainly not written with the open source movement in mind nor to benefit those ideals. Emacs was written to benefit the free software movement. RMS has repeatedly stated how he does not want to be lumped in with the open source movement. The FSF provides a concise and informative description of the differences between the two movements which includes RMS asking the reader to know enough about the movements to distinguish between their philosophies.
So what did the open source movement do? The Open Source Initiative placed the GPL on a list of approved licenses. Open source advocates have contributed to practical projects and endorsed the GPL. I'm sure the free software advocates have no issue with endorsing the GPL and increasing its use. But the reason this license protects ones freedoms to share and modify software so well is not due to anything anyone at the OSI or the open source movement has done. Thus it is not fair for that movement to receive credit for the GPL.
Digital Citizen
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!!
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?
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
Suppose that the software is available as public domain and a company sells a derivative. Then the people who pay for that are paying for the additions made by that company. You are free to use the costless, public domain version if you don't agree with that bargain and I think that many people will (unless the additions in the closed sourced versions are very compelling, in which case the additions seem to very valuable, and the company deserves to be paid for that).
What I don't understand is how people and the government lose money in all this. If you don't want to pay for a closed source derivative, then you are free to create an open source alternative or use the public domain version. If you believe that the derivative is valuable to spend money on (presumely, because it saves you more money than you have to spend on it), then you don't lose money there either. On the contrary, a rational Homo Economicus will only spend money to earn more, so he would actually make money.
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.
You may make this choice for your own software, but you should realize it is a quid pro quo. You spend your time to create software and in return you expect people to 'pay' you with the changes they make themselves. You don't actually give away your software in the sense that you don't expect anything in return. It is different for software created by the government. That software has been fully paid for and the government shouldn't expect people to 'pay' again, since many of the people who paid taxes don't want that (programmers who program open source software under a different license than the GPL or who program closed source software). In reality, GPL source code will be unusable by those groups of programmers, which means they pay taxes for something they cannot use.
GPL then would be better for government
That would depend on what their aim is:
- If they want to stimulate the economy, then public domain is probably the best choice (since more people can use it and save money). And unlike the standard handouts to (big) coorporations, this one actually benefits small business and individuals as well.
- If the goverment wants bug-fixes, then public domain (more eyes) is probably the best choice.
- If they want to have more features added, then it's unclear. I don't think there has been any research into the amount of (valuable) code that is returned with different licenses. The GPL forces the return of code, but the public domain results in more users and my gut feeling is that willing contributions will generally be much more valuable than 'forced' contributions.
So in the end, the public domain may well be better for the government than the GPL.