Slashdot Mirror
Basque Country Gov't Decrees State-Produced Software Should Be Open Sourced
New submitter lsatenstein writes with this snippet from The H:"The regional government of Spain's Basque Country has decreed that all software produced for Basque government agencies and public bodies should be open sourced. Joinup, the European Commission's open source web site, cites an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais [English translation], saying that the only exceptions will be software that directly affects state security and a handful of projects which are being conducted in conjunction with commercial software suppliers."
Now we wait, for people to say that the US is the land of the free; ignoring that these days the EU is doing way more for their citizens than the US. (Acta, Net Neutrality, and so forth)
Everyone do a google image search for "Open Basque"...
That's what I call open sauce.
Maybe they can take a page out of Extremadura's experience in moving to Linux. And if they are moving to Debian, just adapt the Debian Free Software Guidelines. In fact, they, and other Spanish provinces, could use exactly what Extremadura is using, suitably altered to their own needs.
Actually, as I pointed out yesterday in the thread about US financial software whose source code was pilfered by a student, all governments should make their software GPL - ideally GPL3, so that it's there as a public use software, and nobody who wants to close it after enhancing/altering it can legally do it. Normally I oppose the GPL in that it effectively ends up doing everything to sabotage business plans, even if that's not its goal. But for governments, where the ownership is the taxpayer/public domain, it's in my opinion one of the rare cases where the GPL makes more sense than any of the other FOSS licenses out there.
No, you're completely wrong, this is not the current policy of the United Stated federal government.
It's true that when a US government employee develops software, as part of his official duties, it is not subject to copyright in the US (with a few tiny exceptions). But that doesn't mean it actually gets released to the public; in almost all cases it is never released to the public. (Sometimes it does, like expect and Security-Enhanced Linux, but most of the time it doesn't). Even more importantly: most software developed using government funding is developed by contractors, not by government employees, in in most cases the rule about government employees doesn't apply anyway.
For the details of when software funded by the US government can be released as OSS, see this:"Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government" by Dr. David A. Wheeler (me), Journal of Software Technology, February 2011, Vol. 14, Number 1.
Now it's true that a few small parts of the US government do have such a policy. In particular, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's source code policy does share the code with the public at no charge by default.
I do agree that when "we the people" pay for the development of software, then by default "we the people" should get it (unless there's a good reason for an exception, e.g., it's a classified weapon system). Sounds like a good idea. It's even a good idea for the government itself, because it will greatly enable competition for future work (building on past work) and reduce redevelopment (because it'll be easier to find previously-developed stuff). But that's something people need to press for... don't assume it's already happened.
Ask for "release government-funded software as OSS by default" - don't assume it's already happened.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)