Unsung, Unpaid Coders Behind Federal IT Dashboard

theodp writes "The Federal CIO got a standing ovation for the new Federal IT Dashboard. Federal contractors got the cash. But sneak a peek at the 'customcode' directory behind the Dashboard, and you'll see that some individuals also helped bring it to life with their free software. For starters, there's Timothy Groves' Auto Suggest (Creative Commons License), Alf Magne Kalleland's Ajax Tooltip and Dynamic List (GNU Lesser General Public License), and Gregory Wild-Smith's Simple AJAX Code-Kit (SACK) (modified X11 License)."

Comments

And isn't this the point?

[hattig]

A good example of how free, open source, software benefits everyone.

The submission reads like it's different, and that other people have garnered the ovations for these people's work, but the work is in enabling technology, frameworks. Much like Sun doesn't get an ovation or money when a successful Java project is deployed, I fail to see how this is different.

Nice for the coders to get some recognition however.

Re:And isn't this the point?

[Old97]

Precisely and the Fed CIO and other leaders who were wise enough to support/allow the sensible decisions to use FOSS deserve some kudos if for no other reason than to encourage more of the same. The Federal bureaucracy tends to be risk adverse and in many areas have shied away from open source and free software. Their system integrators (I used to work for one) did as well. All that is changing and that's a good thing. Now that I work for a private sector company I can point to the Fed's use of FOSS as evidence that we can trust it and rely on it. Our executives still want to give sacks of cash to vendors like IBM and Microsoft, but in the current economy they've become more receptive.

Re:And isn't this the point?

[hattig]

It was their choice to release their code under an open source license.

I presume that like most good coders, they'll have a decently paying job that is already putting food on the table.

If they wanted to make money from this work, they could have chosen a different license that was more restrictive. They could be offering support or other services for it.

Re:And isn't this the point?

[SausageOfDoom]

Exactly.

Besides, it's not like the contractors downloaded "Bob's IT Dashboard" and changed the logo - by the sounds of things, they just used open source libraries to reduce the development time.

Better than the BBC, for example, who insist on rolling their own libraries for everything, while on the taxpayer's time.

This is great!

[mrjb]

Less tax payers money being wasted. Also, part of releasing your code under a liberal license is that you permit others to use it free of charge under certain conditions. This happened, and those conditions were fulfilled. Quite a nice win for open source- What more do you want?

Re:This is great!

[ivucica]

FLOSS coders at least want recognition. Not everyone, but many do. Who has said "thanks" to them, who has said "this would not be possible without works of so-and-so"? That's what coders want, at the very least. Apple acknowledges FreeBSD's work. Did the US Government?

Re:This is great!

[nacturation]

FLOSS coders at least want recognition. Not everyone, but many do. Who has said "thanks" to them, who has said "this would not be possible without works of so-and-so"? That's what coders want, at the very least. Apple acknowledges FreeBSD's work. Did the US Government?

Do the license terms require someone to say "thanks" to them beyond the usual copyright notice and attribution statement? No? Then nobody cares that you didn't get the recognition that you didn't ask for, emo kid.

Re:This is great!

[ivucica]

Then nobody cares that you didn't get the recognition that you didn't ask for, emo kid.

First, that was uncalled for.

Second, ever heard of good manners? Just because license doesn't order to do it, it doesn't mean the user shouldn't be nice by saying Thanks. Just like it might be nice to click on the "Donate" buttons or seek for alternative way to donate to authors; almost nobody would complain if you did, y'know.

If an expensive US federal project can't even afford to put at least the names of unpaid contributors and honor them in that way... Well, the world is really doomed. I almost always have a "About site" page where I say what tools I used. Because I apparently have some manners.

Re:This is great!

[trg83]

I'm just now joining the thread. I would say force is too strong a word as it brings to mind lawsuits and court orders. However, for commercial projects that I work on that use open source software (non-GPL), I would certainly not go out of my way to list all the software I was using without being compelled to by a license. The simple reason is that there is creativity in aggregating software just as there is in writing code. If a competitor had in their hands a complete list of technologies used to implement an enterprise product, it would certainly not be equivalent to having access to our source code, but it could certainly provide insight into how some of our sexiest features were composed. On the surface, the competition argument in this case doesn't seem that compelling because it's a governement site, but in reality the government contractors are competing in the marketplace like any other software consulting company. Of course I could start another thread here about how people who use open source should open source their software. I think the reality of that is that most businesses are not open to this. Although none of the applications that I have worked on professionally are open source, I have contributed several patches and bug fixes to help improve the underlying libraries the software depends on. I still sleep fine at night.

Re:This is great!

[JWSmythe]

Budgets are a wonderful thing. If you've ever known anyone who works with the government, you'll have heard of it in action. Say a department is budgeted $1,000,000 USD (a low number by gov't standards). Now say that they've spent $750,000 USD by the end of the month, quarter, or fiscal year depending on the period of that budget. They have two choices. Either they can say "Oh, our job only really requires $750,000", and that's what will be budgeted for the next period, or they can spend the money on something (within guidelines, of course). They'll have "the following 20 people will be off at training for the next 3 weeks", which of course not only covers the outrageously priced training, but air fare, and per diem. They may have a new round of desktop and network upgrades. They may find it is time to retire several vehicles from the motor pool. Maybe they came in under budget because they are actually behind on the projects. Time to hire 20 new people.

I thought it was a joke when I heard about contracts for road construction. Over the years, it has become abundantly obvious that it is no joke. The way many road construction contracts go is like this. The companies bid at a rather high rate, to get it done in at least 2x the time required. The companies don't undercut each other by much. They all want the lucrative contract. Of course, there's enough included to help out with kickbacks and other assorted favors. Oh, did I say that last part? No, that never happens in the gov't at any level. So, back to the story. The job will read that it must start by Jan 1 of 2010, and be completed by Jan 1 of 2015. They get paid $15,385 for every day during the construction period, and get a $100,000 incentive if they complete it by Jan 1 2014.

The company who won the contract looks at it and realized:

$15,385 * 1300 days = $20,000,500
($15,385 * 1040 days) + $100,000 = 16,100,400
or
$15,385 * (1300 days + 260 days overrun) = $24,000,600

They already know this is only a 6 month job. On Jan 1 2010 and dig up a section of road, to indicate that they are actually working. They park equipment on it (which necessitates the fees, since that equipment cannot be used elsewhere), place cones, etc, etc. They spend a few weeks accomplishing this. Traffic backs up. People get mad. Stuff doesn't happen. Every few months, you'll see a little bit of work being done, but you never see any notable progress. Then comes April 30, 2015. An amazing flurry of construction begins. If they're lucky, they don't have any unexpected problems (weather, increases in costs, etc), and by Dec 20, 2015 they've completed the job. Everyone goes home and has a nice holiday with their families.

What really came of that? A contracted paid on a day basis should have run for approx 150 days of continued work. Still, that was a $2,307,750 job. Yet, the taxpayers still paid the $20,000,000 for the work to be accomplished.

That, my son, is where your tax dollars go. It's not a mistake, or any sort of laziness by anyone in the system. It's simply the way it works.

And why didn't they go for the $24,000,600 goal? There may be something in the contract which would limit them from participating in future contracts if x% of previous contracts were overruns. It's a short term gain, but a long term loss. Sure, an extra $4 million in my company sounds good, but why not take another $20 million contract that only really costs about $2.3 million. That $17.7 million profit sounds really nice.

I serious oversimplified this. There are some factors like surveying; procurement of materials; re-engineering various aspects; finding Indian burial grounds along the proposed route; special interest groups tying things up with lawsuits and petitions (oh god, who gives a heck about the spotted red-headed cocksucker?); or a billion other things that can go wrong.

So?

[quetwo]

Really? You are concerned about that? Go browse the web for 10 minutes, and show me which websites DON'T use pre-packaged AJAX/JavaScript libraries. EXT, YUI, etc., are all over the place, and used every day. The fact these contractors used these OSS libraries shouldn't concern anybody -- really. Nothing to see here, go on with your Microsoft basing.

In other news...

[MoeDrippins]

... people developing applications often use libraries that have already been written.

Re:Not impressed

[billcopc]

As I have also recently learned, a dashboard is just that: a bunch of charts, graphs and maybe a few summary tables. To literate folks like you and I, it is a huge waste of time and space, but to the average bean counter with half a brain, it is supposedly a tangible vulgarisation of otherwise indigestible data.

The good thing about this gov't dashboard is it seems to have good drill-downs, I was able to click through 3-4 levels deep to find out more and more details. They show you how they calculate a project's rating, and while it is a very simple and potentially misleading metric, at least they lay it out for you (how many deadlines were missed, how often did it go overbudget, etc). They even show a picture of the asshole in charge of each project, too bad you can't click the asshole and have it sort and rate HIS "specific concerns", but they're probably afraid of all the little McVeigh wannabes out there who would love to thin the herd...

Dashboards suck, but this is one of the better ones I've seen. I wouldn't call it worthy of an standing ovation, but I'm just a prick that way. Why don't we ask the old Harvard Graphics folks if they ever got a standing ovation for drawing pie charts, hmm ?

Not News by any stretch...

[sjs132]

I looked for an F'n article to read, but couldn't find one. It looks more like one person putting together an opinion to post on Slashdot, not '"News" for nerds' in any sense.

Best I could tell from this headline: "Unsung, Unpaid Coders Behind Federal IT Dashboard", is that someone is pissed they didn't get part of the bailouts or federal stimulus. Guess what, whats how socialism works, they should get used to it, we'll see much more. It only really works on paper, eventually you have no motivation to work/create if you end up being "Unsung, Unpaid" and it will eventually collapse.

If someone truly want to contribute to "society" with their code, license it on a per-case basis. Someone you like, license for a few dollars to feed your belly lunch. Someone you don't really like (Microsoft assumed usually in this case), then increase the license fee to where both parties are comfortable with the trade.

(The trade = use of your code for cash. All of society is based on labor trades. Trade for food, clothing, shelter or something that can be later traded for those things, such as gold, guns, political power, etc. Society eventually breaks down when those that produce no labored product expect to be compensated on the same scale as those that do produce a labored product.)

Re:Not News by any stretch...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, another right-wing wanker who doesn't know what socialism is, making up their own definition. And on Slashdot none-the-less!

Re:Not News by any stretch...

[oberondarksoul]

eventually you have no motivation to work/create if you end up being "Unsung, Unpaid"

But this code has already been created. None of the authors had any financial incentive to release it for free, but they have done! Trying to claim that they wouldn't flies against the fact that many projects are and have been created for no other purpose than because their authors wanted to, thought it would be fun, wanted a hobby, or so on. Money is not the only reward.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

!stealing

[Doc Ruby]

Whoever tagged this story as "stealing" doesn't understand Free Software. The Federal CIO deserves extra credit for properly understanding and using it. Which, in turn, promotes it in the most powerful way.

Remember that the Feds have given away more software and other tech than any other single source. Including the Internet itself, and indeed jumpstarting computers, microprocessors, and even universal telephone service. Your tax dollars at work - in a way that private industry cannot claim. Events that have changed the world into a much freer place, both for software and for everything else.

Re:!stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. The whining from some individuals in this thread about Open Source / Free Software being used in EXACTLY THE FUCKING WAY IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE is one of the most shameful and pitiful things I've seen on Slashdot.

Re:!stealing

[JWSmythe]

    Some people get bent out of shape when they realize that their "free" license is being used by people other than their low paid peers. Oh my gosh, it's a big money rich group using it. They should pay! {sigh} If I give something away (which I do occasionally), it's free to reproduce at will. I do ask that I'm told if/when it's used in something.

    I have a little proof of concept encryption thing online. I look through the Apache logs once in a while to see who's visiting. Quite a few research labs and somewhat secret gov't organizations have viewed it and downloaded the package. I'd like to know that it's being used in something practical, but I know they can't tell me. My best hope is that someday I'll have something interesting enough out there where they'll not only want to use my little bits of code that I make available, but be hired on to work with them. A little "hmmm, this guy seems to know a little something" would hopefully go a long way. :)

    Am I going to cry if I find out that it's being used in the latest-greatest government initiative, or even as the new secure messing platform that Microsoft puts out with Windows 13? Nope. But if they do snag it and use it, I'll be more than happy to brag that up. Since mine is so simple, I seriously doubt anything beyond someone seeing it, thinking "that's a good idea", and writing their own code for it. But hey, if my functions show up in something big eventually, I'll be impressed. :)

Re:Not impressed

[drinkypoo]

However, making those very same dashboards public-facing is an exercise in futility. A dashboard, by its nature, leverages knowledge that people are expected to already have.

Fail. Just like your car's dash tells you things you could figure out from other factors if only you had time, so does a dashboard of financial information. Sure, I could find out how fast I was going by watching my clock and the mile markers, but I need to know sooner than that. A site like this one does the same thing. It's easy to sit back and say "That's useless" when you're contributing nothing, or don't care about the subject matter... Also, just like giving a "dashboard" to an exec, this makes the information readily available to people who aren't accountants.

How do I set to ignore submitters and editors?

[Weedhopper]

Because this entire submission is just absolute drivel from FOSS cheerleaders who simply don't understand the fucking point of FOSS.

This is EXACTLY how FOSS is supposed to be used.