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Ask Slashdot: How To Share a SharePoint Site?
New submitter grzzld writes "I am a systems analyst for a County in New York. Last year I made a SharePoint site that manages grants and it was well received. So much so that it won a NACo award. Since then, there have been several requests from other municipalities from around the country who would like to get this SharePoint site. The county is trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from people making money from it and having people hold us liable if it they use it and something goes awry. I am afraid that ultimately nothing will be done and the site will not be shared since at the end of the day it is much easier to not do anything and just say no. I proposed that we license it under an Open Source agreement but I am not versed enough in the differences between all of them. It is also unclear to me if I could do this since the nature of the 'program' is a SharePoint site. It seemed like CodePlex would be a good place to put this since it is Microsoft centric and it an open source initiative. I just want to contribute my work to others who may find it useful. The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck. How can I release this to the world and make sure the county's concerns are addressed?"
The GPL variants and the BSD licenses all contain a disclaimer of warranty (the part that reads "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" or similar), which addresses the county's concerns. By releasing code under a license with such a disclaimer, you are asserting that no one can sue you if the code breaks, even if your code breaking caused them some kind of loss.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
Step 1: Cry, because you used sharepoint
Step 2: Wallow about, because it's sharepoint and you're pretty much screwed
Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 indefinitly.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
CYA and don't share anything. If they want it badly enough, they can contract you to build something similar.
The county wants to make sure no one can make a profit off of this, AND they want to make sure no one can sue them?
1) GET
2) A
3) LAWYER
Surely the county must have one or two floating around who can do this. This is not an IT function. Sheesh! Learn where your boundaries are, boy.
Online Grants Management System
Suffolk County, New York
Population: 1,493,350 (2010)
Program Year: 2011
Abstract:
In Suffolk County, NY, the development of grant applications as well as the coordination of successfully funded grants across was determined to be an inefficient system.. Individual staff and programmatic units each kept their own separate monitoring and tracking systems that recorded different levels and phases of grants. In some instances, there were gaps in the collection of information. An interdisciplinary group convened to discuss the problem and to plan for improvements. The planning group brainstormed and used additional quality improvement strategies in order to develop the Grants management System (GMS). GMS has developed as a centralized tracking and coordination system that tracks grants through very phase: the evaluation of whether to apply for a Request for proposal (RFP), application submission, grant award, acceptance of the award by the county, development and finalization of contracts, inventory management, monitoring of expenditures, claiming, revenue receipting, grants reporting, grants purchases, etc. Feedback from SCDHS staff indicated a high level of satisfaction with GMS, improved knowledge and skills, improved management and implementation of grants. Due to the improved efficiencies of GMS, the SCDHS was able to reduce the grants staff by 2 Full Time Equivalents (FTE), with significant cost savings.
What is it with this fear that someone will make a buck? It does not diminish the value of the original work, rather it ads to it. The county should focus on what their job is and if somebody actually manages to create something valuable from that - great!
Many licenses, both open source, copyleft, and proprietary contain wording similar to:
There is no warranty for the program, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program “as is” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
Sounds pretty clear to me.
The site schema? Custom web-parts? Masterpages? Data? Everything?
You could create a site definition that contained as much or as little or as much as your site as you wanted; wrap it up in a Visual Studio solution/WSP and then people could deploy an instance of your site with all of the above pre-previsioned. At that point it's just a SharePoint extension so would be no different to open-sourcing an Office extension. Even better, site templates are largely just XML files so it's even less "complicated" than custom-code - it's all just parsed by the core product.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I work for another muni and have encountered similar questions about software we have developed. You need to take this to your legal department to determine which licenses are acceptable to your legal department before you start asking Slashdot/reddit/intertubes any of these questions. You may find that the GPL is a great license which you whole heartily support only to have your legal department say "WTF?! No!" or worse depending on your clauses within your muni. Once you get legals take on what licenses are acceptable to them, come back and ask which license you should release under. At the end of the day, any liability case or other such legal issues will end up being the purview of your legal department and not yours.
People often list liability as a potential concern when they open source software, but is that a valid concern? Has any organization been sued because software they released to the world when they don't guarantee that it will do anything useful?
If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding the source, maybe they shouldn't be using it.
Most likely your sharepoint site is useful because of a particular list(s) you made, not because of the entire site. If this is the case, you shouldn't need to try and give out the entire installation and whatnot as a bundle. Just save the list as a template(in the list settings), make a wordpress blog on wordpress.com, and release it under a creative commons license or something similar. This way you're not trying to give people sharepoint, you're giving them a particular "list"(plugin) that you put together. If that fails or turns you off, you could always just write a step by step how-to on recreating the list themselves and give them a good ol all-American "Do this at your own risk, I take no responsibility".
The county is trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from people making money from it
Why do they care if someone can improve it and make money from it?
Why are so many people scared to release something into the public domain for the greater good?
FYI, if I remember right all works by a public employee while employed are to be in the public domain. This is at least true for federal workers.
After verifying with the county that you will be allowed to share the code, I would just put it on codeplex with a simple "nothing is guaranteed, as-is, use at your own risk, no support is available".
Our company has released several SharePoint components on CodePlex, and while we occasionally receive suggestions or bugs, we address them if and when we have the time. We do include all source code, which provides the option for people to fix it as necessary, or to provide their own code reviews.
CodePlex *does* REQUIRE that a license be selected, and does provide some assistance in understanding the differences.
If ours is of any reference value: http://sdssharepointlibrary.codeplex.com/
Why do you care if others make money off it? It's government developed so that means it was funded by taxpayer money.
All taxpayers should have access to it, even if they want to make money from it. It should automatically be public domain.
You can still CYA by a simple BSD style license.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
No offense, but I won a NACo award as well...in the 90s. Seems cool, but I am aware that ANY submitted project 'wins'.
I am not so certain I'd be using this award as a statement of how awesome the work is.
* I am not saying the work is not awesome, just that this is not a good measurement.
I think your idea of posting it to Codeplex is a great one, that in and of it's self should be sufficient, if you post all source code with the project.
The county just wants to make sure they can't have somebody turn my work around and make a buck.
Locking up your work is not in your best interest. (And probably not the county's interest either)
Let's say someone takes your work (that you are distributing for free), puts it in a shiny package, and starts selling it. What are your losses? Maybe that shiny package was what people really wanted...what they would really pay for. Someone turns it into an addon for Raiser's Edge and makes some money. This is a good thing Your work improves more people's lives.
Now, down the road, someone else wants some additional features built into the original work. Who is the first person they are going to look for? You.
Besides, the county has no business trying to prevent the residents of the county from exploiting what their tax money funded. If that exploitation includes making a proprietary fork, so be it.
Under an open-source license and be sure to include disclaimers about providing no warranty as to its functionality and suitability for what they're trying to do with it. Best choice would be to consult with a good lawyer who has worked with a "free" distribution of software before. Only in America would you need a lawyer to give something away safely, but here we are.
Who did what now?
Seems you have gotten customers, the hardest part.
You're a technical person asking a technical group a business question. Redirect your inquiry to a business person. If you were working for a commercial company, the terms of your distribution of this software would be sussed out by sales people, marketing people, business analysts, etc., but no technical people (unless you count sales engineers or the like).
Don't give anyone access to your own infrastructure. Maybe offer to do a backup / restore or otherwise make copies, but offer these options to a business person on your side, not to prospective external users.
If the county wants to share but is concerned about liability, THEY SHOULD TALK TO THEIR ON-STAFF/ IN-HOUSE/ ON-RETAINER legal counsel!
They have them, I guarantee it. Use them. The last they want is a tech guy (who has already admitted he doesn't know the implications of the various licenses) fumbling around to figure this out.
If they really really don't want to talk to their own legal counsel, then just prepare an instruction list that other municipalities could follow and publish that instead of trying to distribute the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
The county must have someone on retainer as their general counsel. Why don't you ask him [her], that's what he [she] is being paid for. Just bring along copies of some different licenses (GPL, etc) and let someone with real knowledge of contract law decide what's in the county's best legal interests.
Protect yourselves from what? How would it harm you if someone made money from it?
> The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable
People have been releasing Free software for thirty years or more with impunity. The University of California has not been sued over bugs in BSD. Linus Trovalds has not been sued over bugs in Linux. Why do you think you will be sued?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You exist a government entity and have one purpose and one sole purpose alone and that is to serve the residents of your municipality. You are clearly not in the business of making money through profit seeking endeavors.
With that being said, you worked hard on this and it seems to be a huge success, so the municipality should benefit greatly from such an endeavor. You may have something that works great for you but honestly Sharepoint is really only good for internal apps and you certainly do not have a scalable solution that could be easily marketed to other counties. The best thing you can do is to find a private company to partner with that can take the work that you did and use that as the foundation for building a product, as well as marketing and selling that product.
By letting private interests handle the risks involved, you and your county can serve an advisory role and still work out a mutually beneficial arrangement where your county is well compensated, either through a percentage of gross revenue or a large lump sum.
Open sourcing it doesn't prevent someone from making a buck off of it. All the license agreements in the world don't prevent you form getting sued. As a result, no is the easiest answer.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Form a non-profit, donate the software to it, set up the charter so the software is licensed for public uses for free, and to others for a fee.
Lol..did you work at First Solar?
Are they people you hate or something? Friends shouldn't share crappy MS products like Sharepoint, VB, and Microsoft Bob / WinME with one another.
Wow sharepoint is getting investors on the county level too? That's the huge buzz word amoung the branches here in the military. All the branches either wants it or have it already.
I'm guessing that Code for America, Open Source for America, or Civic Commons would have some experience in dealing with these issues, and have suggestions:
...and sure enough, it looks like Civic Commons has a page on legal policy, which includes ''Legal Issues and Best Practices With Converting/Contributing In-House Developed Code into a Reusable FOSS Project". Also take a look under Chapter 4, as there's a bit of a discussion about code releases using FOIA. The others might have stuff, too, I didn't look too thoroughly.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
New York State Senate releases all the software they develop under a dual GPL3/BSD license. Pas it up to them to release and let them deal with it...
http://www.nysenate.gov/developers/
then sharing is a given whether you like it or not
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck.
There are plenty of licenses, open source and not, that attempts to shield the software distributers from liability - consult your lawyers on these. As for restricting folks from making a buck off of your software - well, that might be tougher. There are some licenses that distinguish between "personal" vs "corporate" use, and these might be useful as a template for a distinction between "non profit vs profitable use".
If their major concern is that if we release it somebody will make money off of it then they need to release it, and release it in such a way that nobody can make money off of it. If somebody's able to make money off it, then clearly it's very useful, and it would be churlish to keep it to yourselves. You release it open source, with a No Guarantees license to prevent you from being sued when some jackass figures out a way to use it to turn over his entire Parket Ticket Payment Database to identity thieves. Then you get your bosses to budget a few hours a week to support it.
So get legal on this, get them to agree to a license. It needs the No Guarantees clause. It should probably have the No Commercial Exploitation clause, even tho that is not terribly effective (see Red Hat).
Government entities like your county have sovereign immunity. Talk to the county attorney, you have one because every municipality in NY does. You are worrying too much.
1. Congratulations for getting a piece of junk ( M$ $hare point ) to do something useful.
2. Share all the things that any other public can see. i.e. just the the glass on the front of your building.
3. If they want to use it, charge them, just like any other service. Market rates. ( How much would it cost to go out, and have this done from scratch? )( Hey... can I buy your desk? Can you just give it to me for free? Hmm? ?)
4. if they want their own, which they will, sell them a package. ( You dont sell offices in your building right? )
5. Always, Always, Always, keep a critical part hidden, so it cannot be cloned or stolen, ( like the design documentation, i.e. Why you did it the way you did.
6. Search this thread for the word 'Lawyer'. Take their advice. ( i.e. County Council exists for a very very good reason ).
7. Pick some place you would like to retire to, and tell that county you can do it for them for a song, but then tell them it needs a few years work on customization. ( That is just about how every cost over run works )
The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck.
who cares if somebody makes a buck? this sounds like sour grapes on the part of the county. They're in no position to monitize it (they shouldn't be anyway, or else they're wasting taxpayer money on business ventures?). Let somebody else make some dough.
Essentially: how to use an open-source license for something created within a closed-source framework? Clearly it's possible and it happens often with code developed for a closed-source language (like IDL or Matlab for example) but Sharepoint is not really a programming language and I don't know if your creative work can be extracted in a way that it can be licensed separately. I think that's what other comments were getting at by suggesting that you create meta-code like a how-to. That's probably a good idea if Sharepoint does not let you extract your site as an unencumbered expression of your creative work. I think liability or potential for profitable derivative works are pretty much non-issues for something like this but a GPL is a good idea if you can get your work into a form that you have the right to license.
Don't use SharePoint or CodePlex. Try this: http://github.com/ or this http://launchpad.net/ or this http://bitbucket.org/
you had me at #!
i doubt its original enough to warrant any worry at all.
As a former government employee, I'll take an educated guess.
Governments are driven by safety needs and generally do not want problems. Of any kind. They already have lots of problems and do not want more.
Therefore if you go to them and say something like "I'd like to share this with the world", the management sees only potential problems and not potential. If you get my meaning. So they are naturally disinclined to grant this idea and they start to pepper you (or each other, if they are in committee).
It goes something like this: "Did you think of A?" "What about problem B?" "What happens with issue C?" These are all designed to make the whole initiative sound dangerous, uncertain, costly, loaded with legal liability, and so forth.
I'd recommend you give it one and only one shot. Set a deadline, that you do not share with anyone, and drop the whole matter if you've not cleared the approval hurdles by that time. Make it a reasonable deadline, long enough to account for the bureaucracy, but short enough that you don't over-invest in something that's likely not to pay off for you.
Your real payoff is the resume experience and external recognition. Keep that front and center in your mind. You've already succeeded and anything else is gravy.
Release it with an Affero license. That way, they'll be able to use the software and make money off of it, but they'll then have to make it available to everybody else (and, thus, "Spread the wealth").
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.