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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.
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 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 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?
"Requiring a government to "opensource" software is a nice but difficult proposition."
No, it isn't.
"The biggest problem I see is this: how can say a Western government justify giving stuff free to Al Qaeda or the Chinese?"
Simple: they don't. That they can't avoid a third party from giving it away to Al Qaeda doesn't mean they themselves are giving it to Al Qaeda.
And even then, open source protects *the source code*, not the binaries. Take the GPL as an example: somebody should give you sources only after they give you binaries. Well, don't give such a third party access to the binaries unless they abide not to give them in turn to Al Qaeda. Done.
"So effectively, you subsidize software development in other countries."
That's true and an intended effect. But even if simple and readeable by everybody even if they didn't sell their soul to Mephistopheles (aka lawyers), it doesn't mean it isn't legaleese and once it's legaleese, you can always find ways to diverge from its first intent (i.e.: one thing is copyright, and a different thing export laws).
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.
"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."
But you already answered your question! "the government needs it" It either makes a business case or not. You said the government saves a million a year, so it returns its expenditure in five years and above that it's net benefit.
Well, if it makes sense, it makes sense, what does it matter to the government who else benefits? (and that's even disregarding the case that those other 9 companies might be from its own country, thus giving them an edge that will return to the GDP and to the government itself in form of taxes -what do you think that made USA a world's leader but government effort specially after WWII?).
And your example hides an implicit (two indeed): that if the government doesn't develop it, others will do that will sell the software at a fair share of the cost to all the implied agents and without a hidden agenda. Well, the last 20~30 years demonstrates beyond all doubt that's not the case: most famous recent billionaires come from software world, and even Adam Smith 101 will tell you that's impossible under "invisible hand"-guided free market: closed source has effectively suffled wealth from the people to the hands of a few because once your hypothetical software development company has developed its software, it won't sell it for 500.000 to each of the nine companies plus the government: it'll sell it for the full 5 millions each, and the ten of them will buy it because -as I already stated at the beginning, it still makes economic sense for them.
And then, they'll use the free 45 millions they got out of the transaction to lobby the government to pass laws that ensure the company no other competitors will enter the market in the future.
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..
Nit pick : the requirement to not give the binaries to Al Qaeda would not meed the OSI definition of Open Source software. You're not permitted to add stipulations on who receives sources or what they are used for. If Al Qaeda uses your software to make cluster bombs that drop live kittens packed with C4, that's fair game for Open Source licenses.
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.
"Nit pick : the requirement to not give the binaries to Al Qaeda would not meed the OSI definition of Open Source software."
Probably not. But then again, nitpicking, you don't put the "not for Al-Qaeda" clause in the same contract/license than the software's one and you will be probably in the bright side.
"You're not permitted to add stipulations on who receives sources or what they are used for."
But that's a stipulation on the limitations of the second party to third parties. As long as the second party abides and doesn't have the intention of dealing with third parties, you are in the safe.
"If Al Qaeda uses your software to make cluster bombs that drop live kittens packed with C4, that's fair game for Open Source licenses."
Which wouldn't be such a bad thing as it seems at first glance. Al-Qaeda members have probably drunk Coca-Cola or coffee at Starbucks, driven Fords and bought at 7-eleven without affecting the reputation of said companies. What would be the problem of Al-Qaeda terrorists using, say, Vim -or even worse, Emacs?
I do understand these principles. For the record I'm against copyright and patents. But I know there are policital realities that make such a stand unfeasible.
What "political reality"? Out of all the silly objections people have raised to FOSS, I have never heard that seriously used in parliament. You're creating an issue that simply hasn't existed before.