Slashdot Mirror
Government Code Collaborative Falls Short
Tom Adelstein writes "This story starts off singing the praises of the Government Open Code Collaborative, then reminds the reader: you discover that it has built one more bureaucracy to oversee its existing bureaucracy, with oversight over the new bureaucracy. Have you ever heard the cliche about prisoners running the asylum? Well, this gated and restrictive open-source government repository fits."
GOCC also stands for Great Ohio Coaster Club. Coincidence? I think not. Someone's taking us for a ride.
did we just Slashdot a government site?
The govenrnment does not need to do more iota more than this: make it's code open source; be receptive to using open source and accepting open source contributions.
We the open source community get the fruits what we paid tax dollars to produce, and the government doesn't waste money on redundant proprietary code. Everybody wins. Adding bureaucracy to something that is clearly a partnership with the community is just dumb.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
... go to www.gocc.gov instead - they apparantly don't know how to set DNS servers at the government, and require a www. in front... :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
then reminds the reader: you discover that it has built one more bureaucracy to oversee its existing bureaucracy, with oversight over the new bureaucracy. Have you ever heard the cliche about prisoners running the asylum?
/raises hand.
Everyone who works in a Fortune 1000 company, please raise your hand. Anyone who thinks that their employer COULDNT be any more bureauratic please raise their hand.
Implying Governments are INHERENTLY bureaucratic is a myth, conversly, arguing that a PRIVATE firm (of any notable size) isnt just as complex is silly. The Short: All big systems are complex and byzantine.
No, I did not. I thought it was the inmates running the asylum. Or may be I am mistaken and Ken Kesey was more accurate regarding conditions in American mental hospitals.
...like DARPA does with Cougaar.
Government sponsored open source is already here... good times!
The Army reading list
Just after the linuxjournal article is a reasonable response by Christopher Fowler, one of the participants. Basically he says that the GOCC is just a small part of open source use within government, that it's all volunteer, and that it has its own niche. Well, better see what he had to say, I'm probably mangling it beyond recognition. I get the picture that it's a positive but slow step in the right direction.
Yes, there are only five pieces of software. But they are under an open source license and you can download them. That's all as it should be.
Yes, you have to go through paperwork in order to participate in the project. So what? Every open source effort has some gatekeepers that decide who can participate and what they can contribute. When it comes to government, you can't have a Linux or Theo just making decisions, you actually have to have paperwork, because we have open government that needs to be transparent, not a monarchy. See the connection? Democracy, openness, record keeping? Records and paperwork are the price we pay for openness. In most cases, that paperwork is not just a good idea, it is required because we, the people, passed laws to require it.
GOCC probably will not succeed in its current form. But people are at least interested and trying and that's a good thing. If you have good ideas and are interested, I'm sure you could find a way to participate.
Instead, of course, you are just using this effort as a soapbox to complain and whine. Ditto for Tom Adelstein, the author of the LJ piece, which is also full of tirades and platitudes, but empty of ideas and solutions.
The open source movements needs contributors, not whiners. If have ideas for how to improve GOCC or build something similar with less bureaucracy, present them. Even better, get involved in the project: talk to your local government, run for office, get something on the ballot, etc. Government really is no different from an open source project: things only change if you contribute. Whining and complaining will just piss people off, and if there is too much of it, you endanger the entire project.
The whole idea behind open source is "open," and that's the part GOCC lacks. Nobody can contribute to it without significant restrictions like accepting liability for the code. Open source has NO WARRANTY for a reason. You want a warranty or technical support, you buy it. In addition they have provided no way to build a community around their offerings.
GOCC is virtually unchanged from when I looked at it six months ago, and I wouldn't be too surprised if everybody just kind of ignored it.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
this site
has some cool looking stuff available.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Research/Software/
But you have to jump through hoops to get it.
In fact, I think that there will always be a problem with "US government" and "open source" at the same time, specifically that the government doesnt want stuff it writes internally (or has written for it by a contractor and owns copyright for) released to people, organizations and countries on that list of "people, organizations and countries we dont like right now" that it has somewhere. (the one places like cuba & iran and people like bin laden are on) because those people, organizations or countries might use this unspecified code to do unspecified "bad things".
Its the same thinking as to why there are still encryption export regulations in the US right now.
When we hear rumors of someone elses code that might possibly be useful (and this happens infrequently, and unofficially via the grapevine) we have to make "official" requests through an unfortunately large hierarchy. We are usually met with "why do you want this? This was developeed with funds from program XYZ and you can't use it. This model has not been validated and we can't release it...."
And this is internal to ONE organization! When we make similar requests to our external sister labs of equal size and bureaucratic depth the problem scales exponentially.
It's very frustrating and I wish I could come up with a way to fix it.
Let me quote from an exchange from a hearing on Texas' SB 1579 (the Open-Source bill):
All elected officials care about is getting reelected. To do that takes cash and guess where that comes from?
Yeah, right.
"Well, this gated and restrictive open-source government suppository fits."
Standing on the shoulders of giants.