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German Parliamentary Committee Pushes for Open Source Friendly Policy
Qedward writes with this except from Computerworld UK: "Germany should change a law to enable public administrations to make their software available as free and open source, a German parliamentary committee has advised. German public administrations currently are not allowed to give away goods, including software, said Jimmy Schulz, a member of Parliament and chairman of the Interoperability, Standards and Free Software Project Group. The current law prohibits governments from being part of the development process in the free software community, he said. 'This is a clear disadvantage because it cuts off all benefits obtained from free software, such as being cost-efficient and state-of-the-art,' he said. Besides a recommendation that the government should explore whether the law can be changed for software, the group also called for the use of open standards in order to make sure that everybody can have access to important information, Schulz said. 'We also called for public administrations in general to make sure that new software is created as platform independent as possible,' he added. While the project group is not in favour of giving priority to one type of software over another, it said in its recommendation to the Parliament earlier this week that free and open source software could be a viable alternative to proprietary software." I think a fair rule is that, barring extraordinary and demonstrated need, all tax dollars for software should go only for the development of software for which source is available gratis to all taxpayers, and that secret-source software makers are free to change to fit this requirement any time they'd like to have their software considered for a bid.
Believe it or not, the idea that the government shouldn't give away things has some noble reasoning to it. Not sure of the specific reasoning in Germany, but it might range from avoiding favoritism to the government getting value for the work it produced.
But like all things, it can lead itself to a less than well-meant outcome.
Looks like this is a good experiment to be done at the EU level, where they write a million page spec on everything, and create huge bureaucracies to enforce them. They can then flood all of Europe with bureaucrats to make sure that all software being used for government work is Open-Source.
In the USA, it is possible for public and governmental employees to not only contribute to open source software, but also to have that be part of their particular job.
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ImageJ is a public domain software package developed at the NIH (National INstitute of Health) by Wayne Rasband.
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NIST also has software that is publicly available, though not all of it is "public domain".
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I don't know whether the "public domain" status is used because Gov't entities are not allowed to hold copyright on materials they develop; I know I've seen copyright labels on a lot of NASA products and images and animations. I strongly feel that products developed from our tax dollars ought to be available back to us and between/amongst different governmental departments so as to save us money and development costs.
If only NASA, thanks to Donald Becker, had a BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE!
If the government can't give it away then maybe auction it off. Don't auction off the copyright, just auction off a single copy. Then if it is GPL the goverment will have to fulfill its obligation and pay for what it got by posting the source code. Thus posting the source code for free will not be giving anything away, it will be paying a debt.
Requiring a government to "opensource" software is a nice but difficult proposition. The biggest problem I see is this: how can say a Western government justify giving stuff free to Al Qaeda or the Chinese? No, I'm not raising the Beware the Terrorists/Communists argument, simply stating the fact that opensourcing software means that EVERYBODY gets free access to the source, and that includes people outside the political entity. So effectively, you subsidize software development in other countries. Again, this is a great and altrusitic idea but one must also think of the political consequences of such a move.
Requiring this of software developed by the government makes a lot of sense. However the language "considered for a bid" suggests you want this to include all software vendors the government employs. While some software (voting machine) should always be open, need ALL software a government uses fit this requirement?
Idiots like you are a huge part of the problem, in your narrow minded idiocy yo assume that no one else can invent or steal things. Well they do both, and as Wikileaks has shown National Security means 'I am a politician or bureaucrat, you cant embaras me'.
I woyld say more but I would get very cross.
MFG, omb
Content Mafia delusions at it again?
Then get a therapy!
While it's nice to think that anything the gov't pays for should belong to the public, that doesn't necessarily work out like you expect.
Say you're developing software to determine the lowest fuel cost route for airplanes. Say it saves the user $1M/year.
The government needs it, so do, say, 9 airlines. Say it costs, in round numbers, about $5M to develop that software (15 work years, give or take). Should the government impose 5M in taxes on the population, then fund the full development cost, and release it to the public? Or should the government pay, say 500K, as would those 9 airline companies.
let's analyze this..
Scenario 1: Taxpayer pays $5M, Government saves $1M, Airlines save $9M among them. Airlines pay nothing for $9M advantage, Taxpayer gets a raw deal, paying 5M for 1M in return.
Scenario2: Taxpayer pays 500k, Govt saves $1M. Airlines each pay 500k, save $1M. Airlines get a 100% return on their investment (which is pretty good), taxpayers get 100% return on their investment too. Taxpayers aren't subsidizing and increasing profits for airline companies.
Yes, the numbers are contrived, but the point is this.. To get a piece of software the government can either pay for all of it or can share the development cost. In general, the government pays for all of it when it's something nobody other than the government needs (because there's nobody willing to share in the cost and benefit). But if it's something that everyone can use (whcih is the case for things like office software, etc), maybe sharing the development cost is a better way to go. It's generally a LOT cheaper for the taxpayer to buy a license for government use (only).
(this leaves out any arguments about lockin for future costs, transparency, etc.)
Current government policy is downright hostile, this change would make it less so. But I wouldn't characterize the resulting policy as "open source friendly"; at best it would make policy comparable to other European nations.
Whether this passes remains to be seen. This is just a committee proposal to study the issue; that might be a serious effort, or simply a way of railroading the idea. And industry in Germany is very powerful. They usually don't have to bother with inconveniences like bribery or lobbying, they just say what they want and get it.
Yes, indeed, open sourcing means people "outside the political entity" can get free access to the source. One hopes that they will find it useful for learning something, understanding the benefits of sharing and cooperation, and generally improving their lot in life. Perhaps even you might understand these principles some day.
All tax dollars for software should go only for the development of software for which source is available gratis to all taxpayers, and that secret-source software makers are free to change to fit this requirement any time they'd like to have their software considered for a bid.
Doing something along these lines is essential to have long term public oversight over government.
In fact, you need to go a little bit further, and have a requirement not just for the source to be available, but for it to be well-documented, and build-able to exactly produce the binaries being used. Otherwise you'll get people playing all kinds of games with the system, adhering to the letter of the law while massively violating the intent.
The "well-documented" concept would take some thought to define, but I'd imagine something reasonable and workable could be developed.
We don't necessarily need to make all source code created for any possible purpose open source as soon as it is created, however.
For some applications, such as source code running equipment that could reasonably be expected to be used in a legal case (e.g. security cameras, drug measurement tools, radar guns), the source should always be open. We might even extend this requirement to include firmware and hardware design details in addition to source code.
In some applications that are less time critical, the source might be held closed for ten years or so. A delay of this kind would provide a reasonable opportunity for businesses to have trade secrets for a limited time. Mechanisms could be set up to insure that the source would eventually be produced, including some sort of reward / penalty system.
For that matter, something like this is needed to have long term public oversight over businesses in general, not just those working with the government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
Munich does develop its own Linux distribution. GPL forces them to open source most of their work. I conclude that the news can not be entirely true..
The proposal comes from a parliamentary committee. This means, it has not gone through a legislation process where lobbyists will sink it. The conservative party will sink it, because the idea supports liberal tendencies and the lobby says so, the liberal party will be against it, because it will hurt the established IT companies (or at least be a threat to them, and those might be part of their election force), the social-democrats will kill it, because the conservatives get an increase in votes out of their behavior and they want also more votes. The green party will love the idea, but are too small to push it forward alone. The socialists will like the idea, basically because the social-democrats are confused and want to sink the idea at first, then change their opinion only to look inconsequential and sink themselves. However, the socialists will not understand want this is really about. The pirate party will sill working on sinking themselves and not discussing the issue, as they have to flame about other pirates.
Look at how long it took Oracle Mysql to get Triggers and Sprocs compared to Oracle and comparing Gimp to PS there is no contest. Though not allowing government to contribute to OS where it make sense is a v bad idea.
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