WhiteHouse.gov Releases Open Source Code

schliz writes "The White House has released four custom modules for the Drupal content management system. The modules address scalability, communication, and accessibility for disabled users, and the release is expected to benefit both the Drupal community and the WhiteHouse.gov site as the code is reviewed and improved by the open source community." Reader ChiefMonkeyGrinder adds an opinion piece with a somewhat envious view from the UK: "Open source is treated as something akin to devil-worshipping in some parts of government. So, the idea that a major project in the government backyard would be based on something as basic as Drupal is pretty far-fetched. No, this side of the Atlantic would have involved a closed-tender process; a decision made [behind] closed doors based on proprietary software and we'd be completely in the dark about costs, about delays, and about functionality."

Comments

Obviously more evidence

[Xeriar]

that our government is sliding towards communism!

Re:Obviously more evidence

[MozeeToby]

Well, the mantra of communism is "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That's... pretty much exactly how open source works. Everyone sees the benefits regardless of how much work they put into it, whether that be designing the architecture the system, writing code, submitting bug reports, or even just submitting crash reports.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

With the one significant difference of OSS being "From each according to his abilities, if he feels like it, or is redistributing modified binaries, to each according to his needs if something matching his needs happens to be available, and because the provider of that something voluntarily made it available.

The difference between being voluntary(yes, BSD trolls, people are legally compelled to release their modifications if they distribute binaries from GPLed source; but they take on this contractual obligation voluntarily) and being a command-and-control scheme is not insignificant.

Looked at in a slightly different light, OSS development is basically a variation on the "consortium development" model, adjusted for the fact that, since duplicating data is virtually free, lawyers and restrictions to prevent free-riding are actually more expensive than free-riders are. BSD-style OSS makes no legal effort to rein-in free riding, either ignoring the issue or depending on the fact that maintaining your own fork is often more of a POS than staying up with the mainline, while GPL-style OSS makes no legal effort to go after free-riding users; but does seek to compel free-riding developers to contribute.

The handy thing about it is that, because it does have a slightly communistic flavor, it works for and appeals to your idealistic sharing hippie types; but, as experience has demonstrated, it is surprisingly compatible with capitalist incentive structures(just look at how much kernel development gets done, basically because large corporations find it profitable), and it involves basically zero state coercion, aside from legal enforcement of voluntary private contracts. Thus, it is largely agreeable to everyone from communists to libertarians, with the exception only of rent-seeking corporatist scum.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[mweather]

You probably don't actually NEED Photoshop. Few people do.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And that's ignoring the fact that Marxism childishly assumes all economic transactions are zero-sum and wealth can never be created.

Where did you dig up that nonsense? Yes, communism consistently fails because it never manages to come up with a viable alternative to the market for setting prices and distributing commodities. However, there is nothing in Marxism implying that transactions are zero-sum. Marx himself, in his sections on economics, is practically orthodox Adam Smith. He is completely in agreement with Smith's stuff about gains from specialization of labor(the famous Pin Factory) and was, if anything, even more fixated on the productivity advantages of capital goods, and the way in which capital goods could be combined with labor to produce a surplus with which to produce more capital goods. The only real difference was that he took the (wholly orthodox) notion that "In a competitive market, the price of a commodity is equal to its marginal cost of production" combined that with the (also wholly orthodox) idea of "labor as commodity", and drew the unpleasant conclusion that "in a competitive market, the price of labor will be equal to the cost of bare subsistence for the laborer."(and, given what the pre-welfare-state industrial slums looked like, this wasn't exactly without empirical validation)... The whole marxist idea of labor being oppressed by capital rested on this conclusion, and on the idea(explicitly opposed to the "zero-sum" notion) that capital + labor would generate surplus value; but that, since the market for unskilled industrial labor was extremely competitive, capital would end up holding basically all the surplus value, reinvesting it in capital goods, and obtaining even more surplus value in the next round, while labor would always be stuck at a subsistence level.

Later Marxists were fascinated with(and frequently sought to emulate) to work of industrialist innovators like Ford and Taylor, precisely because they recognized that those guys where on the cutting edge of non-zero-sum transactions and maximal productivity gains from the combination of capital and labor with scientific management techniques.

Obviously, none of this denies the existence of random pot-smoking dorm-room "communists" who wear Che shirts and think that "work is slavery, man!"; but the intellectual underpinnings of Marxism and communism(as well as the activities of communist states, which tended to explicitly emphasize the swiftest possible transition from near-zero-sum subsistence activities to high-surplus industrial ones) is actually in nearly complete agreement with orthodox capitalist theorists about the non-zero-sumness of transactions, and the gains from trade and specialization of labor. Communists just don't like how those gains are distributed. Unfortunately for them, they never hit on a more viable mechanism.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[timeOday]

And that's ignoring the fact that Marxism childishly assumes all economic transactions are zero-sum and wealth can never be created.

There is an equally childish school of thought that grabbing up whatever you can get your hands on is no crime, since you must by definition have "earned" it and therefore are entitled to it. Both extremes are wrong.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Monkeedude1212]

I've always wondered what would happen if I took an Open sourced project and used it in a closed source solution of my own. The only way I'd come under legal threat is if the Open Sourced community notices me, and I figure there are some weird loopholes in copyright law that I could mandate that no one be allowed to view my source.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depends: If BSD, nothing(so long as you followed any attribution requirements).

If GPL, nothing, unless you distributed your proprietary binaries, at which point you would be legally obligated to offer the recipients of those binaries access to the source for no more than reasonable costs of reproduction(this is a common misconception: lots of outfits comply with the GPL just by slapping a zipped source bundle on an FTP server somewhere, just to save the hassle; but your legal obligation is only to recipients of the derivative binaries). If you did distribute, and they caught you, you could theoretically be on the hook for Real Serious (civil) Penalties. Thanks to our friends in big content, and the proprietary software industry, you can really get your ass kicked for knowingly committing commercial copyright violation. And, although there exists the sentiment that "GPL=free hippie stuff", GPL violations are, in fact, just as serious as violations of any proprietary license agreement. As a matter of style, the SFLC and similar tend to prefer cooperative approaches, and view litigation as a last resort; but that is purely voluntary. They would be legally entitled to nail you to the wall. Such case law as exists has upheld OSS.

(What I don't know, and have never heard about a test case involving, would be some dodge like incorporating OSS into your product; but having contractual language in your sale agreement that requires recpients to agree not to exercise their rights under the GPL, thus keeping the code de-facto closed.)

Re:Obviously more evidence

[ZaphDingbat]

See the various busybox lawsuits, where they found strings related to the busybox source in various products. I believe you can be compelled to show your source code in response to a subpoena, but it won't necessarily become public record.

It also scares me that you think there could be "some weird loopholes in copyright law." If you don't know what copyright does for you, why the heck are you in a creative industry? Go! Read! Learn how copyright works and how and why the GPL works within it.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[ffreeloader]

Oh, for Pete's sake. The progressives/liberals name call on this site on a daily basis. There's probably close to 50 posts a day denigrating Christians, Republicans, conservatives of any stripe, etc... and they aren't modded as trolls every time they appear, even though many of them are gratuitous examples of intolerance and hatred of opposing points of view. The double standard exhibited here is incredible, especially as it comes from the group of people who preach tolerance to the point that tolerance must equal acceptance of an opposing point of view. Bunch of damn hypocrites if you ask me.

Yes, I should have probably said, "the only politically-aware people who can't see the difference are socialists and communists. Why is it true? Because both groups see it as the governments responsibility to take the resources of one person and then give those resources to other people. Thus they are far less likely to see a conceptual difference between the government forcing a person to help their neighbor and a person volunteering to help their neighbor.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Bing Tsher E]

Later Marxists were fascinated with(and frequently sought to emulate) to work of industrialist innovators like Ford and Taylor, precisely because they recognized that those guys where on the cutting edge of non-zero-sum transactions and maximal productivity gains from the combination of capital and labor with scientific management techniques.

Or, because said Marxists, like the Taylorists and Ford, were craven materialists interested in maintaining their self-delusion of being scientific. Scientific Socialism. Eugenics. National Socialism. Stalinism. Scientific Management. All variant flavors of Fascist practice. All part of what has evolved forward into what's now called Corporatism.

If you've worked in one of the squeaky new Taylorite operations that are all now the norm in the Corporate World, you know what I'm getting at.

Read this article for a good reference at what I'm getting at. Taylorism is bad news for any creative thinking people.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Blakey Rat]

Well, the mantra of communism is "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That's... pretty much exactly how open source works.

Unless you can't (or don't) write code. In which case, your contributions are at best ignored, at worst loudly rejected.

(It might be how open source is supposed to work, I wouldn't know about that. But it's certainly not how it works in practice.)

Re:Obviously more evidence

[fm6]

Funny and ironic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Obama administration has brought a lot of technology geeks into government. Not entirely by design: many were volunteers for his campaign that found that they'd been too fired up by winning the election to go back to their old jobs.

Why is this ironic? Because tech geeks do not tend towards socialist ideologies. If anything, they tend towards hyper-libertarianism. An ideology that's just as detached from the real world as anything Karl Marx dreamed up, but does have the virtue of not being something you can impose on people.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Rayonic]

Well, the mantra of communism is "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That's... pretty much exactly how open source works. Everyone sees the benefits regardless of how much work they put into it, whether that be designing the architecture the system, writing code, submitting bug reports, or even just submitting crash reports.

Well no, it fails on the "from each" part. There are plenty of users who could contribute to an open source project, but don't. It's not a perfect analogy, but the gist of it is that the Open Source movement doesn't require (or need) every capable person to contribute. But under a Communist system, it's assumed that everyone is contributing to the best of their abilities. (The question of motivating people is left to the reader.)

Re:Obviously more evidence

[ascari]

Surplus value? And here I always thought that capital + labor = startup company...

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Rayonic]

The only real difference was that he took the (wholly orthodox) notion that "In a competitive market, the price of a commodity is equal to its marginal cost of production" combined that with the (also wholly orthodox) idea of "labor as commodity", and drew the unpleasant conclusion that "in a competitive market, the price of labor will be equal to the cost of bare subsistence for the laborer."

One overlooked fact is that, in a competitive market with low labor costs, the cost of goods is driven down too, which effectively makes the poor richer. (i.e., they get more for their dollar.) This has led to the modern phenomenon of the overweight poor person who has a cell phone, TV, and other previously-expensive products.

That's not meant as an attack, by the way. I myself am an overweight middle-class person with a smartphone, HDTV, and other previously-really-expensive products.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[b4dc0d3r]

If you need Photoshop, it's available for US $700 via capitalist methods, or you can get a hold of it in a more Communist way if you prefer.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/whatsnew/?sdid=FPVCB&

If you need an image manipulation tool that is functionally similar to Photoshop, there's GIMP. It fills the needs of people who don't need Photoshop specifically, but do need advanced image editing. And GIMP fills that need for free, which is a nice bonus. You can likewise arrange to purchase it if you'd like, or obtain it through more communist methods if you prefer.

So not really sure what your point was, but if everyone needed Photoshop the situation would be a lot different.

Re:Obviously more evidence

[Macrat]

You probably don't actually NEED Photoshop. Few people do.

Or Microsoft Office.

Good move

[betterunixthanunix]

I have a lot of complaints about this current administration, but I'll give them credit where it is due. This is a good move, and I hope to see similar actions in the future.

Re:Good move

[jimmy_dean]

Agreed. I have many, many complaints about this administration, but at least they're saving some amount of money by utilizing Drupal instead of some proprietary CMS system that might go out of business at any time.

Re:Good move

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, let's check President Obama's record after just a year in office, okay?

-- stopped a depression in its tracks and converted it into what now clearly has been a severe, but tolerable, recession - check

-- raised public opinion around the world of the United States, and appropriately is re-focusing the Middle Eastern wars to Afghanistan, working finally in comity with Pakistan with successful tactics against terrorists - check

-- passed a health care bill that is far from perfect but will cut govt expenses over time, extend coverage to millions who previously were getting their health care at high costs to all of us in emergency rooms, and prevents insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, a bill desired by a majority of the US population - check

-- passed the largest middle class tax cut in US history - check

-- walked a middle ground that accepts faith as a positive force that can work with government (e.g. faith-based initiatives) but ends favoritism for the extreme religious right influence such as in regulations concerning stem cell research and abortions - check

-- overturned pro-polluter regulations of previous administration (remember Bush's EPA appointee who said the solution to air pollution was for people to spend more time indoors?) and dramatically increased investment on environmental research - check

-- and of course, this openness initiative including his Dept of Defense giving the green light to open source, and the types of actions this Slashdot article that we are responding to is all about.

I'm not a mouthpiece or a shill, just a slob American voter like anyone else here who didn't even vote for the guy, but I've got to admit this seems like an incredible record to have established in a short time in office. He's certainly more than meeting my expectations as a president.

So I'm curious when you say, "I have a lot of complaints about this current administration" what are they? I am at a loss to understand the vehement reaction of negative groups like the so-called "Tea Party" to this president. I know good and deserving fellow citizens of mine don't like being painted as racist, but I can't otherwise make sense of the reaction. This is a president with an excellent beginner's record. Why all the hate?

Re:Good move

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So I'm curious when you say, "I have a lot of complaints about this current administration" what are they?

For the most part I agree with you. But I do agree with the previous poster in that I too have a lot of complaints about this current administration. Handling of the ACTA comes to mind, along with appointing RIAA lawyers to positions within the DoJ seems pretty scary. Their chiming in and interfering with the Joel Tenenbaum case on behalf of their former employees is repugnant to me and seems to directly contradict Obama's campaign promises about lobbyists and industry insiders role in his administration. He has done nothing about allowing US citizens to buy drugs from Canada as he promised. He has not stopped no bid contracts above $25K as he said he would, although he has made some noise, nothing that sticks.

That said, I'll second the person who responded with regard to credit card reform and I'd add I was very happy to hear about his new policy on former executive branch employees and lobbyists (can't lobby for years after being one, can't be hired on if you were a lobbyist) but saddened that he signed so many waivers making exceptions to this rule. For the most part, he's exceeded my expectations as well but there are certainly things to dislike.

I am at a loss to understand the vehement reaction of negative groups like the so-called "Tea Party" to this president.

This seems mostly to be because marketing is more powerful than truth. People want a different option to what they see as a frightening change, even though few of them can explain what that change is or why they find it frightening. The tea party has disparate goals and many people are trying to make use of them for entertainment dollars or for political gain. It's a movement of unfocused anger and fear and also a way to disassociate with the Republican party whose approval is in the toilet, while still advocating all the things that party supposedly supports.

Re:Excellent !

[Yvanhoe]

Let's do that then :
Trustbird is a project led by the French Gendarmerie (a kind of police) in order to add military cryptography and chain-of-command features into thunderbird. It has been released publicly.

...someone's sarcasm detector is off today.

[Xeriar]

Burning my karma kandle at both ends.

Re:Excellent !

[vikingpower]

Ahhh... I used to live and work in France, and dealt with the DGA a couple of times. I had not thought such a nasty outfit - they ARE arms dealers, after all - to make such a move. I am nicely surprised.

Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[aussersterne]

since sliced bread. Easy and damned rapid to deploy, reasonably scalable, easy to modify and customize, flexible enough to build everything from a blog to an e-commerce system to a social networking platform to a cloud-based RDBMS front-end to a personal document and photos filing system.

A million things I used to do with my own C code, shell scripts, and hard drives are now done on a hosted domain using Drupal. More and more of the work I do for others just slides into Drupal by default because it's the easiest, most powerful, fastest, and most growth-capable way to accomplish it.

I just love Drupal.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Em Emalb]

Spit it out man, what are you trying to say? Do you or do you not like Drupal? Damned kids, being so mysterious these days. Back in my day, you stated flat out how you felt about something. And we liked it that way.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Monkeedude1212]

Drupal is the greating thing since sliced bread.

Woah, woah woah, Woah woah woah, woah. Yes, this warrants 7 woahs, now 8. Everything you mentioned can easily be done with bread.

Its easy (water and flour) and damned rapid to deploy (Little while in the oven), reasonably scalable (just need a bigger bun-cake-pan), easy to modify and customize (dough!), flexible enough to build everything from a blog (bread-log, also known as a baguette) to an e-commerce system (ancient romans often bartered with wheat) to a social networking platform (http://www.breadtalk.com/ apply to join!) to a cloud-based RDBMS front end (okay what the hell is that? You can't just make stuff up you know) to a personal document and photos filing system (Sliced bread makes great seperators, see: Club sandwhich)

Don't get me wrong, Drupal is pretty amazing, but lets not go around belittling the great invention that is sliced bread.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Sir_Lewk]

Taking it literally, I believe "greatest thing since sliced bread" may still indicate that sliced bread is the greatest thing, but the new thing being talked about is greater than all achievements after (since) sliced bread.

Of course, this might still imply the possibility of things greater than sliced bread existing before sliced bread...

In other words: 3 18 9 2 5 8 3 5 2 15 12 11 9 14

In the above list, 14 is the greatest element since 15. If 14 where changed to a number, say 16, then it would become the greatest number since 18.

Ok, I think I've officially over-analysed this.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Monkeedude1212]

I think the issue I have then is that sliced bread would have a value of infinite, since there are endless possibilities for bread.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Arthur Grumbine]

Drupal is the greating thing since sliced bread.

Woah, woah woah, Woah woah woah, woah. Yes, this warrants 7 woahs, now 8. Everything you mentioned can easily be done with bread.

Its easy (water and flour) and damned rapid to deploy (Little while in the oven), reasonably scalable (just need a bigger bun-cake-pan), easy to modify and customize (dough!), flexible enough to build everything from a blog (bread-log, also known as a baguette) to an e-commerce system (ancient romans often bartered with wheat) to a social networking platform (http://www.breadtalk.com/ apply to join!) to a cloud-based RDBMS front end (okay what the hell is that? You can't just make stuff up you know) to a personal document and photos filing system (Sliced bread makes great seperators, see: Club sandwhich)

Don't get me wrong, Drupal is pretty amazing, but lets not go around belittling the great invention that is sliced bread.

All of your points but your last one only had to do with bread, not specifically sliced bread. Fortunately, the greatness of sliced bread is such that it still remains a greater invention than Drupal. For evidence I present this sandwich of Perfectly Normal Beast.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Monkeedude1212]

I mean to demonstrate that bread alone is great, and since it is a such an integral and derivative part of sliced bread, sliced bread must be greater or at least equally amazing.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[Bing Tsher E]

Sliced bread actually sucks. Bigtime.

The 'crust' on a loaf of bread protects the bread inside, and keeps it fresh. Slicing the whole loaf just promotes early spoilage. The promotion of pre-packaged sliced bread goes hand in hand with the idea that bread needs to be pumped full of chemicals and preservatives to keep it fresh.

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[SleazyRidr]

No you've analysed it about the right amount. That's pretty much the conclusion I came to when I thought about it.

I would give a nice description of my thought process, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel...

Re:Seriously, Drupal is the greatest thing

[migla]

But sliced bread is *less* versatile than unsliced bread. And slicing bread can be a little, meditational moment every day.

Sliced bread is not only over hyped, it is the work of the devil! The devil doesn't want you to stop and think even for a second. The devil wants you to just keep running along in the rat race. /humor /truth

The more I hear about Vivek Kundra's work

[Nethemas the Great]

the more impressed I am by his lack of respect for the status quo of government IT. Keep up the good work. It's about about time someone applied some common sense.

Re:The more I hear about Vivek Kundra's work

[drumcat]

+1000

Re:The more I hear about Vivek Kundra's work

[itsdrewmiller]

Kundra is great, but this wasn't his brainchild. This is 20-somethings fresh off the campaign getting inside government and fixing it. Change I can believe in, indeed.

Um... bullshit?

[nacturation]

About the UK and Open Source:

No, this side of the Atlantic would have involved a closed-tender process; a decision made by closed doors based on proprietary software and we'd be completely in the dark about costs, about delays, and about functionality.

http://www.google.com/search?q=uk+government+open+source

Odd... seems the opposite to what the esteemed "ChiefMonkeyGrinder" claims. Of course, one of the links there is "words, not deeds" so perhaps all the noise about open source is just that.

Re:Um... bullshit?

[yuna49]

Of course, one of the links there is "words, not deeds" so perhaps all the noise about open source is just that.

Indeed if you read the article you would have seen a comment by a VP at Ingres that sounds remarkably similar to the criticism from the UK commentator cited at the top of the story:

This is not the first time such platitudes have been made by the government. Over the past 12 months the office of the CIO has continually pointed to open source as the key to reducing capital expenditure on large public sector IT projects. We at Ingres work with public sector bodies daily and have not seen the enforcement of these policies at a practical level and so view this announcement cautiously. Right now there is a very large negotiation underway to renew Oracle's contract with the MOD which in theory should be put to competitive tender but sadly is being conducted behind closed doors.

Of course, Ingres has a vested interest as a competitor to Oracle, but I'm not surprised to hear that the Ministry of Defence conducts its IT negotiations behind closed doors, "in the interests of security," I'm sure.

Re:Um... bullshit?

[aitala]

How about http://data.gov.uk/ ? That's Drupal too.

Or is the site not really part of the Gov't?

Eric

Re:Um... bullshit?

[gbjbaanb]

to be fair, the bit and we'd be completely in the dark about costs, about delays is not true. After a little while of project work, the newspapers would be full of stories about the delays, the costs, the extended deadlines, the additional costs and the failures of functionality.

Actually, I started to put the links in, but then I got too depressed at our government's record of IT failures. Idiots.

A shining example

[drumcat]

When the BS is removed, some bright people can do some brilliant work. Congrats WH IT Team! Bravo!!

It happens this way because ...

[damn_registrars]

We truly have awesome hardware (as noted in the summary):

decisions made by closed doors

Really, does anyone else have doors that can make important decisions for them? It's no wonder other countries hate us for our freedoms; I'd be jealous of sentient doors if my country didn't have them! And you don't even want to know what our doors can do when their open...

Re:It happens this way because ...

[nacturation]

How do they force numbers to paint in those "Paint by Numbers" books?

Re:Are you f_cking kidding me?

[drumcat]

And they've been cracked and exploited now how many times?

Very good.

[Jaysyn]

Now let's make the rest of out government as open & transparent as the code that was just released. :D

Re:Very good.

[larry bagina]

What the fuck planet are you living on? Nancy Pelosi drained the swamp and has given us the most ethical, open, and transparent congress ever!

Re:Very good.

[WillDraven]

But what about the swamps delicate ecosystem?!

Re:Excellent !

[Yvanhoe]

Actually one hand does not know what the other does. Open source acceptance is not widespread in French public offices, but when one does manage to keep lobbies at bay, these kind of initiatives happen.

Re:Excellent !

[solevita]

is a project led by the French Gendarmerie (a kind of police) .

And British BT. One in the eye for the negative summary.

Mister Mayor, the city payroll database is broken

[h00manist]

"Last week hundreds of people got over a million dollars in paychecks, and others got negative values. Something about data corruption. Who is this Data and what money is he getting?"

"Why are you telling me? Call some software people and fix it. And investigate about this money thing."

"They said they it can't be fixed, the whole things needs replacing. The company that made it closed, and we have no sauce codes for it, and it will take at least a month, and cost a gazillion more to adapt with all the other databases that have no sauce."

"I do remember something about this sauce for the codes back when we got it in 1982, we talked about it in the city council but nobody understood anything."

GPL or public domain?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

The GPL requires copyright ownership, but work done by the Federal Government can not be copyrighted. I looked at a couple of the modules and they all include GPL v2 license. Shouldn't they be public domain?

Re:GPL or public domain?

[varmittang]

Nope, do you think the NSA distributes or gives out all the code it uses.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

There's no requirement that work done by the Federal Government has to be published or released. Unreleased code can be classified or avoid FOIA for various reasons, but it cannot be protected by copyright.

In this case, they actually did release code and they attached a copyright notice to it. They don't have to publish it, but if they do, they can't copyright it either.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[ProdigyPuNk]

I'm sure this is a minor oversight and the person responsible just didn't realize this. Here's some more info on copyright re: the government:

3.6) Can the government copyright its works? This one has to be taken slowly, and we'll look at federal and state governments separately, because the rules are different. With one exception, works of the United States government are public domain. 17 U.S.C. 105. The only exception is for standard reference data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Standard Reference Data Act, 15 U.S.C. 290e. However, there's a big loophole here: while the U.S government can't get copyright for its own works, it can have an existing copyright assigned to it. So if the U.S. government produces a work, it's not copyrighted. But if an independent contractor working for the government produces a work, it is copyrighted, and nothing prevents that contractor from assigning the copyright back to the government. This reconciles the fact that the U.S. government can't copyright its works with the fact that if you stay up late on weekends, you'll see Public Service Announcements against drunk driving that say "Copyright U.S. Department of Transportation." Also, there are some entities that might seem to be part of the U.S. government, but are not. For example, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer a branch of the U.S. government. In addition, while under U.S. control, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and organized territories of the U.S. are not considered to be part of the U.S. government for purposes of copyright law.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[SavTM]

The GPL requires copyright ownership, but work done by the Federal Government can not be copyrighted. I looked at a couple of the modules and they all include GPL v2 license. Shouldn't they be public domain?

Seconded for this question. Are public domain code snapshots subject to the license in the comments or are they truly public domain? Is the code usable by for-profits without necessity for citation or adherence to the original license (like public domain print/music/artworks)? I wonder if RMS senses a disturbance in the force.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[yuna49]

What an insightful observation! I'd guess the developers just followed the usual procedure and attached the GPL license text.

Have other projects using the GPL had to deal with this issue? Can Drupal modules be released as "public domain" even if the rest of the code is GPL? Since the Federal Government has no copyright to transfer, it's probably not even possible for them to give the code to the Drupal developers and let them place it under the GPL or transfer the rights to the FSF.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[abigsmurf]

There seems to be a common perception by a lot of people that the GPL isn't just another licence agreement and that it's the same as public domain.

It's somewhat amusing looking at some code sharing sites which allow you to specify the licence. There are scores of GPL'ed ~5 line code snippets for generic algorithms the use of which would easily be excused under fair use laws making their GPL status moot.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[russotto]

The GPL requires copyright ownership, but work done by the Federal Government can not be copyrighted. I looked at a couple of the modules and they all include GPL v2 license. Shouldn't they be public domain?

The part added by the government can't be copyrighted, but if they are derivative of GPL code, the original copyright holder still has copyright on that.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What an insightful observation! I'd guess the developers just followed the usual procedure and attached the GPL license text.

This is one of three possibilities. The other two being, they started using the code from open sourced modules and thus are still bound by that license or they contracted the work out and the copyright was reassigned to the whitehouse, in which case they can license it.

Can Drupal modules be released as "public domain" even if the rest of the code is GPL?

Drupal modules can be closed source or have any license.

Since the Federal Government has no copyright to transfer, it's probably not even possible for them to give the code to the Drupal developers and let them place it under the GPL or transfer the rights to the FSF.

As I said, the works are either public domain (not really a bad thing) or GPL, but it all depends upon how on the ball the white house people are with regard to federal copyright laws.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[Zeinfeld]

Nope, the code was almost certainly produced by a contractor and thus the copyrights vests in the contractor in the first instance. The contract will require the contractor to relinquish at least some rights to the government, this typically extends to a general requirement to 'open source' the code. GPL is actually the most restrictive open source license that is commonly used. If you are a contractor wanting to prevent other parties from selling your code in a commercial product that is not open source, the GPL allows you to do that. If on the other hand you want to make the code as open as possible then BSD or public domain are better. The original Web code running in the Clinton White House was the NCSA server. It may have changed to Netscape Server at some point, but that was pretty much understandable when the NCSA server was falling into disrepair pre-Apache. Incidentally the reason that the Clinton White House adopted the Web as their standard over the alternatives was that they had free use of the NCSA copyright code because it had been developed under a US government funded grant. At this point the British Government has gone way beyond open source to open data. This is a much bigger deal as I really could not care less what office suite the civil service use, it has no effect on me. Allowing access to government data in machine readable format is a much, much bigger deal. That is something I cannot do for myself. Rather than having this bizarre obsession with open source on the desktop, I wish people could take a look at the bigger picture of government IT contracting and ask why every IT project attempted turns into a fiasco. The amount spent on desktop and O/S apps is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been wasted on the NHS IT system.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Nope, the code was almost certainly produced by a contractor and thus the copyrights vests in the contractor in the first instance.

Umm that was the third of the three options I cited. I don't see that it is by any means a certainty however. It looks like the guy running the project at the whitehouse is a coder and has employees that are the same.

. At this point the British Government has gone way beyond open source to open data.

Open protocols and formats (I assume this is what you mean) is a huge and important feature, although to say the British government has moved to it is a bit of an overstatement. I'd note that open source coding, pretty much leads to open protocols and formats because it means there is a reference implementation of any data format or protocol. In theory it could be obfuscated, but that is not what happens in the real world.

Rather than having this bizarre obsession with open source on the desktop...

Umm, who uses Drupal modules on the desktop? This article is about OSS on the server.

...I wish people could take a look at the bigger picture of government IT contracting and ask why every IT project attempted turns into a fiasco.

A lot of it has to do with closed bid contracting, inside dealing, lack of transparency and lack of oversight. Open source in government helps this because you aren't paying people to re-implement anything and developers can't hide what they're doing as easily or pretend they're writing large amounts of code when they've only committed a few lines to the public repositories. The Obama administration has taken a few steps in this direction and toward publishing government data in open formats easily machine readable, but more can be done.

The amount spent on desktop and O/S apps is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been wasted on the NHS IT system.

Moving to open source for servers will almost certainly reduce long term costs for large projects such as this. The desktop can benefit as well, but the ability to take competitive bids on everything, when exercised, makes open source in both areas a huge financial win.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[yuna49]

In reply to my own question, I'd totally forgotten about VistA, the open-sourced health management system developed by the US Veterans Administration. It's in the public domain, but only available through a Freedom of Information Act request. There are commercial and non-commercial versions of the code as well, one licensed under the GPL and one using the Eclipse license.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[EvilIdler]

There's a discussion here: http://drupal.org/node/30708

If being GPL is a problem for a piece of government code, there's still no problem with a module being of a different license. The modules are not part of the Drupal distribution.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[Bing Tsher E]

If the part added by the government can't be copyrighted, it can't be licensed under the GPL. It's incompatible with the GPL and they cannot touch each other.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[zeroduck]

This is one of three possibilities. The other two being, they started using the code from open sourced modules and thus are still bound by that license or they contracted the work out and the copyright was reassigned to the whitehouse, in which case they can license it.

Drupal considers modules derivative works, so modules must be licensed under the GPL. Drupal Licensing FAQ. Not sure if it'd hold up in court, but thats what the Drupal community understands as their obligations.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[istartedi]

1. Clean room Drupal
2. Incorporate modules into said clean-roomed version under a proprietary license.
3. ???
4. Profit? Probably not, but a fun time to be had by lawyers perhaps.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[Zeinfeld]

>>Nope, the code was almost certainly produced by a contractor and thus the copyrights vests in the contractor in the first instance.

>Umm that was the third of the three options I cited. I don't see that it is by any means a certainty however. It looks like the guy running the project at the whitehouse is a coder and has employees that are the same.

You posted a theory. I worked at the EOP on those systems when they were first put in.

Re:GPL or public domain?

[russotto]

If the part added by the government can't be copyrighted, it can't be licensed under the GPL. It's incompatible with the GPL and they cannot touch each other.

The public domain is compatible with the GPL. I don't know where you got the idea that it isn't.

Re:Are you f_cking kidding me?

[kroyd]

Whitehouse.gov is mirrored through akamai (netcraft).

Transparent mirroring is of course only one way among many to use drupal (or any other cms) securely. It is my impression that the current US administration actually allows hiring someone with a higher IQ than the president, so someone probably did a google search.

France: a nation of warriors.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always amusing to see ignorant Americans ridicule the French, even though the French have known warfare for thousands of years longer than America has even existed.

When the French have seen war, it has been on their own soil most of the time. They have seen entire generations fight to the death for their freedom, and that's only within the past hundred years. Meanwhile, America has barely even been scratched on its home soil. Pearl Harbor wasn't even on mainland America, but thousands of miles away. And during some battles of WWI, the French would lose a number of soldiers and civilians every 10 minutes of fighting equivalent to that of the American losses on 9/11.

The French have shown more valor, bravery and courage under fire than America ever has. The French are true warriors, and true defenders of freedom.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond that, they are America's oldest and most loyal ally. We may have a "special relationship" with the U.K., but how many times have we been at war with France?

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[medcalf]

No one who has studied warfare doubts the French soldiers. The French leaders, on the other hand, tend to be panic-stricken, egotistical and unwilling to believe the reality in front of them. Which is why France has the reputation for surrender that it does: it's not the soldiers, but the leaders, who fall apart.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[chthon]

Chlodovech (or Clovis)

Charles Martel

Charlemagne

There was for cebnturies rivalry between England and France, but Louis XIV basically created the France that we know now.

Napoleon gave most other European nations enough to think about. I think they more won the war finally due to attrition than anything else.

I think it is only since the Franco-German war of 1870 that France got this reputation.

But look at the first world war. France did not run. They had some difficulties, but ultimately (with the help of the English and the resistance of Belgium at the Yzer) stopped the German troops before they reached Paris.

Look at their record at Verdun, they did not run, they made huge sacrifices.

And the second world war ? Leadership in all the allied nations had not taken into account the advances in battlefield technology, and it was Belgium, England and France that where on the run.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[maharvey]

Charlemagne begs to differ. So does William the Conqueror. And Napoleon.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[MartinSchou]

France was a Major Power in May 1940, and before the end of June it had surrendered.

To be fair, that would have happened to any of the world powers at the time, provided that the areas attacked weren't too large.

First of all, Germany had built up a huge war machine.
Secondly they rewrote the rulebook on how you manage an offensive war. They didn't stop for anything, including supplies. It wasn't called Blitzkrieg (lightning war) for nothing.
Thirdly, the German army at the time was at a pretty significant technological advantage. Their armoured units were top notch, as were their air force and I'm guessing their infantry were similarly equipped.

Could they have taken the US with a similar tactic in 1940? Unlikely, because the US is a massive area. But I'd be surprised if they couldn't have taken the states from New York to Virginia or North Carolina. That would cripple the US leadership. Establish a foothold, take control of local industries to aid in building more military hardware and supplies and settle in for a long war. Then you move over to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan to gain even more industry as well as food supplies.

Could they have taken USSR, if they had started there, instead of taking on everyone? Again, a little doubtful for the same reasons, but notice just how far they DID get. That was done while they had to fend off the Allies on the western front as well. And if they had consolidated their takings instead of constantly pressing forward, they wouldn't have had such vulnerable supply lines, they wouldn't have had to try to advance in winter time on open plains etc.

Pointing fingers at France because they were conquered in less than a month is a bit like laughing at a random fat guy because he got the snot beaten out of him when he stepped into the ring against Mike Tyson.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[bar-agent]

The French are true warriors, and true defenders of freedom.

This is correct, and is backed up by the stereotypes of the bad-ass Frenchie, the Foreign Legionnaire, and the underground revolutionary.

But yet, it still sounds weird to hear it.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[laddiebuck]

The French have shown more valor, bravery and courage under fire than America ever has. The French are true warriors, and true defenders of freedom.

OK, you love France, I get it, but I can't let bullshit like that slide. In French history, when Frenchman wasn't killing Frenchman, they teamed up to invade foreigners. Napoleon was the Hitler of the 18th century, lest you forget. Under fire, France has been unimpressive, with a largely conscript army that lacked real morale and discipline, and this is consistent going back to the Middle Ages. In modern times, it has a volunteer army that may be pretty good, but is untested. Occasional flashes of valour like Napoleon's imperial guard or the tough guys of legend in Algeria and Indochina and in the colonial empire before them or the Resistance are drowned out by a long record of brutality and oppression and cowardice. (That's what amuses me when people think of France as a civilised country. Maybe compared to Germany, but certainly not compared to say Austria-Hungary or England or America.)

No, sorry to contradict you, but France has never been a defender of freedom and its sons have rarely been true warriors.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[shnull]

i think what you really meant was 'used to be' ...

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[DaVince21]

I can tell two things from your post just now:

1) You're a patriotist.
2) You can't stand humor that aims at stereotypes.

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[jamarsa]

And don't forget the english, they were in the run too... Remember Dunkirk

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[jamarsa]

Frenchs resisted against most of european powers that tried to strip them the rights gained in the French Revolution and restore an absolutist monarch. They resisted against reactionary and monarchic forces, showing peasants around Europe what rights to stand for. Napoleon was not only a successful general, but gave the world the Napoleonic Code which is used throughout the world as a basis for justice of all people and not only the aristocrats. I say that even though I'm from one of the countries that most suffered the invasion from the french (and my home city was bombed, sacked and burned, althougth Wellington was responsible for that)

Re:France: a nation of warriors.

[laddiebuck]

The rights gained in the French revolution? Those rights were quite late and only really helped people on paper. That's even overlooking the massive bloodbath that was the French revolution and the notorious instability of French republics. When England had a more liberal Bill of Rights a hundred years earlier and America had just ratified a very progressive Bill of Rights, colour me unimpressed with the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" -- especially as it didn't help the average Man in the street too much. When England had asserted the supremacy of parliament and America had established an actual republic, France was merely following a global trend.

Napoleon gave the world the Napoleonic Code (though when you break things down, around 2.5 billion people today live under common law systems and around 2 billion under civil law systems, not all derived from the Napoleonic code) but he wasn't too assiduous in enforcing the rule of law. Face it, he was a dictator, and sometimes had his enemies murdered. The Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries are who really spread liberal democracy, and they had also asserted equality before the law, which you cite, centuries before.

I'm sorry your home city was sacked and burned. Spain -- I assume? -- had little option but to side with her powerful and oppressive neighbour, and I respect the guerillas that continued to fight against France. I'm from a country -- Hungary -- which was chopped up, in some areas unfairly, by the Allies in 1919, and left to the Russians in 1945 because of Roosevelt. The tides of history often pound the unlucky.

I was the same kind of broken process over here.

[newdsfornerds]

Until this administration, hasn't the White House been a 100% MSFT shop? Somehow the U.S. Navy manages to stay afloat with many systems running Windows server OS. Then again the Navy can afford to have lots of people massaging/patching/rebooting the Windows boxes 24x7.

Tax money

[jimmy_dean]

Although I applaud this because at least the federal government didn't waste gobs of money on a proprietary system that might not be around tomorrow, I still can't help but yawn at this news. This has nothing to do with the President or probably even his CTO that he nominated. It was probably just some developer that the federal government has hired who recommended the use of Drupal and suggested open sourcing the modules that they developed.

Re:Tax money

[gnieboer]

...I still can't help but yawn at this news. ... It was probably just some developer that the federal government has hired who recommended the use of Drupal and suggested open sourcing the modules that they developed.

True, but the interesting thing I think is that the people that the developer has the contract with took the suggestion, ran it through a government staff, and got the idea approved. A staff that gains nothing (directly) by giving the code away, has to take the time to understand the implications of their decision (since they'll be on CNN and fired if they do something dumb), and would normally consider something like this a security risk by default.

So I think it's fairly groundbreaking for a government bureacracy. And it gives the rest of government a precedent to use when having a similar discussion with their bosses.

Re:Tax money

[hercubus]

... some developer ... recommended the use of Drupal and suggested open sourcing the modules ...

and _someone_ in the government said "yes we can" [tm] release the source

i'm thinking no code even remotely related to the White House would have been released from the previous administration's sealed bunker

Re:Tax money

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This has nothing to do with the President or probably even his CTO that he nominated. It was probably just some developer that the federal government has hired who recommended the use of Drupal and suggested open sourcing the modules that they developed.

I'm curious as to why you think that. Is it because you have information we don't or do you just have a bias against the current administration so you mentally refuse to assign credit to them for acts you approve of?

In case you're interested in reality, this project was the baby of David Cole, a well known Drupal developer and OSS supporter who was appointed by Obama to several positions in the White House technical staff (currently senior advisor to the CIO) and who previously worked as data analyst for the Obama campaign and later on the transition team planning the new infrastructure. Now he probably did not come up with the idea since he just gave a talk with the guy who open sourced 24 Drupal modules developed by the New York State Senate. (An event that seems to have slipped under the radar of Slashdot.)

Re:Tax money

[jimmy_dean]

Wow, read into my post a little more why don't you? Geez, can't a guy have a non-political opinion about a technical decision?

Re:Tax money

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Wow, read into my post a little more why don't you? Geez, can't a guy have a non-political opinion about a technical decision?

You made the following assertion:

This has nothing to do with the President or probably even his CTO that he nominated.

I asked why you believed what you believed and what basis in fact you had for forming that belief. If you're going to make assertions, surely they should have some basis. Asserting the president had nothing to do with something is not just an opinion, it's making a claim and was presented as a statement of fact. Is your decision making process so broken you can't even answer a question as to how you come by your opinions?

tl;dr

[Gazzonyx]

Old people are annoying.

Re:tl;dr

[Bing Tsher E]

Well, you can always hope to never grow old and annoying yourself. We can hope for that, too.

Let's not lose perspective. This is minor.

[jbn-o]

At the same time, on more important life and death issues (such as war and threats of war, health care, trillions for corporations while citizens go hungry, civil liberties) this administration shares a lot in common with the previous administration, an administration that even former supporters grew to dislike. In my congressional district people know that trillions on occupation hurts us at home in many ways. Drupal code contributions can't measure up to the impact of keeping that much money in our country solving domestic issues. President Obama won't get me to change my mind with something as trivial as this.

Re:Let's not lose perspective. This is minor.

[gnieboer]

Um, yes.

If anyone is basing their decision on who should be the leader of the world's largest economy/military/nuclear stockpile based on whether they use Drupal for their website and release any source their team creates, then... FAIL.

Doesn't mean it's not a good idea that shows action behind words.

Re:Excellent !

[vikingpower]

Someone modded this down to "troll". Definitely some people around today who have no sense for fucking humor. Godverdomme.

Re:Excellent !

[medcalf]

Did we surrender Drupal to Canada? I seem to have not had any interest in RTFA, but that still sounds like a bit of a stretch.

Re:Are you f_cking kidding me?

[medcalf]

Not to rain on your partisan parade, but much of IT staff for the WH now were also here in the prior administration.

As basic as Drupal

[Arancaytar]

Well thank you. >:P

My economics 101 teacher lied!!

[Sloppy]

And yet Free Software's virtue of allowing users to maintain or hire anyone to maintain their software, make it the freest market. So you've got free market communism in one corner, competing with proprietary software's central-planned-economy capitalism. ;-)

Don't Install

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't install this source. It will redistribute your cpu cycles.

Re:Not even a question

[bigpat]

The difference is so fundamental, I can't even believe this "question" comes up.

Yes, it is unfortunate that people seem to conflate voluntarily helping people and trying to better society through charitable acts with socialism.

To your other point, yes all governments compel using force it is just a matter of degree and for what purposes. The Constitutional Democratic ideal is simply to minimize that coercion and maximize personal freedom. Where the socialist ideal says that freedom is a false promise rarely realized and all must be compelled to the maximum extent to better society.

One side believes that defensive war is the only reason to compel society to mobilize, where the other would mobilize for an endless war against inequality.

Re:Let's not lose perspective. This is minor.

[Bing Tsher E]

Open Government would show action behind words. Instead, we're subjected to more of the secretive subterfuge that we all had gotten used to during the Bush years. Secret meetings, closed documents, short review periods before votes on multi-thousand page legislation. Chicago Gangster style thuggishness.

Say hello to the New Boss.

Same as the Old Boss.

Thank You White House

[TheKerryHatcher]

Although I don't agree with many of the current administration's policies, I LOVE this one. Instead of spending crazy amounts of *OUR* money they went with a free solution. One that they can share their improvements back with the community and with other agencies. This action will encourage # many business, small and large, to jump on the open source bandwagon, and stimulate the economy. How does using free software stimulate the economy? easy. Companies like Acquia, Mollom, Four Kitchens are able to get bigger contracts from bigger corporations ( http://buytaert.net/att-using-drupal ) and small shops and independent contractors get more jobs from other small business. You know the kind that drive our economy. In all, thank you Mr. Obama for putting the right people in charge of your website!

Re:Let's not lose perspective. This is minor.

[GlassHeart]

...short review periods before votes on multi-thousand page legislation

HR 3590 is indeed 2,074 pages long, but if you actually go look at the document yourself (really, please do), you'll see that after the actual bill begins on page 15, there are only 25 or so lines of text per page, set in a big font, and the margins and line numbering consume about 40% of the width of the page. Don't let misleading talking points stick in your head.

Not just change you can believe in

[weston]

But change you can run diffs against!

Site developed by a team of private contractors

[snowwrestler]

The new Whitehouse site was developed by a team of private contractors including Acquia, Phase 2 Technologies, and General Dynamics IT. The modules are posted to Drupal.org by staff from Acquia and Phase 2, so I would assume they hold the copyrights.

My company worked with Phase 2 on a Drupal site and the contract did make provisions for them to retain the copyright of certain kinds of work.

Re:Site developed by a team of private contractors

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Ah, that's clear then. Private contractors working on behalf of the government are clearly allowed to retain copyrights (although they give full credit to "The Whitehouse").

Tried to use Drupal for an Army website, shot down

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to rebuild my Brigade's website in Drupal and was shot down by the FT Knox webmaster. "Increases the surface attack area" was the reason. I argued in person but he said PHP is not allowed (though it has a Certificate of networthiness). I tried to push Linux but let that go, tried with mysql and let that go. But Drupal MUST have php to run, database can be MS or other.

So, the end result is using army.mil's new "create" area (http://www.army.mil/create/developer/downloads.html) which provides a dreamweaver template to use. Which meant that i had to order dreamweaver. Blah, but it looks good and most of all it is acceptable by post.

Re:Let's not lose perspective. This is minor.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Open Government would show action behind words. Instead, we're subjected to more of the secretive subterfuge that we all had gotten used to during the Bush years. Secret meetings, closed documents, short review periods before votes on multi-thousand page legislation.

Actually, Obama did pretty well with forcing open discussion of the healthcare legislation, even if most of the Republicans refused to actually do much more than recite rehearsed talking points. What's interesting is if you follow the links to the Drupal conference presentation it shows how they added webcams so you can see and hear meetings happening in the Whitehouse, obviously not all of the rooms, but still a huge step towards opening things up. The same goes for publishing data.

Clearly the current administration is not where we'd like it to be, but it has actually taken steps in the right direction, and publishing code it uses and for that matter using open source projects instead of handing pork over to vendors for locking us into their proprietary solutions is certainly not "same as the old boss". Give credit where it is due.