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Why The US Government Open Sources Its Code (opensource.com)
He's been the White House technology advisor since 2015, and this month Alvand Salehi delivered a keynote address at OSCON about the U.S. government's commitment to open source software. An anonymous reader quotes OpenSource.com:
The Federal Source Code Policy, released in August 2016, was the first U.S. government policy to support open source across the government... All new custom source code developed by or for the federal government must be available to all other federal agencies for sharing and reuse; and at least 20% of new government custom-developed code must be released to the public as open source. It also established Code.gov as a platform for access to government-developed open source code and a way for other developers to participate.
Before this policy was released, agencies were spending a lot of money to redevelop software already in use by other government agencies. This initiative is expected to save the government millions of dollars in wasteful and duplicative spending on software development. Because of this, Salehi said, open source is not a partisan issue, and "Code.gov is here to stay." Another benefit: Releasing open source code allows the government to benefit from the brainpower of developers across the country to improve their code.
Code.gov points potential contributors to their code repository on GitHub.
Before this policy was released, agencies were spending a lot of money to redevelop software already in use by other government agencies. This initiative is expected to save the government millions of dollars in wasteful and duplicative spending on software development. Because of this, Salehi said, open source is not a partisan issue, and "Code.gov is here to stay." Another benefit: Releasing open source code allows the government to benefit from the brainpower of developers across the country to improve their code.
Code.gov points potential contributors to their code repository on GitHub.
I expect Trump to nix this as yet another of Obama's "bad policys".
--- Keep the choice with the user..
It's a great initiative but...
Somehow I can't see LLNL releasing codes for simulating nuclear processes. Similarly, I don't see the CIA, NSA, FBI releasing code for their intelligence, data gathering/mining and investigations. Just thinking about it, I suspect that a lot of this code isn't written by the US Government, but by contractors who can patent/copyright and make it ineligible for this program.
That leaves... Javascript used for different website apps. I would be surprised if anything much of anything else was published through this program.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The US mil tried to save money and advance with Ada. The contractors soon get back to projects using the kinds of code they wanted to submit and be paid for.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
taxpayer money funds its development?
which is the ONLY freedom there is. Anything else is a lie.
Why the us government open sources less than a quarter of its code.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe, but I think NASA's portable batch system (PBS/Torque) was released to the public before most Slashdotters were born yet it's still in use.
The way government works, the source code will be there available for reuse. But when another agency wants to do something similar, one of two things will happen:
1) They will commission new code to be written anyway, or
2) The government contractor will reuse the code and still charge the government full price, as if they developed it from scratch.
It's still a good idea, even if they can't figure out how to spend less money.
Does anyone bother reading it and does anyone care?
When the nsa had their code open sourced, everone got upset...
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
The government publishes 20% more ways to print hello world, track users!
These projects need some linting added to their CI setup. They got some n00bs on the team who can't keep their whitespace under control.
A lot of times, people might prefer to write their own code instead of attempting to reuse someone else's bullshit... a lot of the time, you'll spend just as much effort reworking very old/unmaintained files into something worthwhile.
Because the Russians can read it anyway?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have never understood why source code and it's accompanying materials developed under contract for the government (funded by taxpayers I might add) is not *mandated* to be open source.
The public has no idea how much IP is locked up in the coffers of FFRDCs because of this archaic policy.
I can't see this lasting if it gets press. Too many things are on the chopping block.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I checked it out when they announced the gov libraries and web standards a while back. Usually I'm a critic and pessimist when I see initiatives like this from govs and companies. I thought they actually put together some high quality stuff, was impressed. Hope they continue the program because it has a lot of merit and the designers for those standards obviously worked really hard on the designs and documentation. I applaud their efforts. If you haven't checked out code.gov yet do it, I think you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised (like I was) with what they've done. Still plenty of work for them left to do and expand on their programs.
The code belongs to the people, just like the land and parks and public buildings
Java and C++ both fail at this.
"Code.gov is here to stay."
Until the funding source to maintain the site runs dry, or vested interests persuade certain Congressional parties to defund it.
We had developed software under the DOE SciDAC program, which was distributed via an Outreach site. When funding got tight, that site was the first to go. Last I checked, the lone guy holding the line was keeping it up until the server died, at which point it was gone for good. If you want persistence, better make sure not to rely on a single point of failure. And these days, any .gov domain is prone to failure and/or corruption.
20% is an insult. We are PAYING for the development of this software, and ALL of it must be released publicly, including and especially anything developed by the military. We should also have formal agreements in place to collaborate with other nations. 99% of the software a country needs to run itself is the same. We need to work together internationally toward that common goal. This all just makes me angry. Saving money inter-agency is one thing, but the cost savings inter-nation would be an order of magnitude greater.
A long time ago, the Department of Energy's Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (in the Office of Science) and the Office of Advanced Simulation and Computing (part of NNSA) jointly set down a policy that software (which was unencumbered by being classified, under export control, etc.) was to be released using OSS licenses. So this is nothing new for some parts of the government.
At that time it was widely understood that (1) the software was paid for by US taxes, and should be widely available; (2) the DOE research units (laboratories, funding at universities) benefited greatly from the availability of OSS, and full participation was to the benefit of OASCR and ASC.
This did not prevent the various technology transfer operations from continuing to try to monetize software products, but at least there was pushback available via this policy.
https://science.energy.gov/~/media/ascr/pdf/research/docs/Doe_lab_developed_software_policy.pdf
Agreed on the need to open source much more government code -- although one can discuss limited exceptions for security reasons which is a slippery slope.
Even for security-related intelligence tools, open sourcing much more makes a lot of sense for both national and international reasons as I explained here in 2010 in an OpenPCAST proposal:
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
OpenPCAST was an Obama administration initiative, and it seems to be currently inaccessible under the Trump administration, so here is the full text from there with updated links.
====
The need for FOSS intelligence tools for sensemaking etc.
This suggestion is about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines (including at a linked elaboration) why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such free and open source software (FOSS) "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security.
I feel open source tools for collaborative structured arguments, multiple perspective analysis, agent-based simulation, and so on, used together for making sense of what is going on in the world, are important to our democracy, security, and prosperity. Imagine if, instead of blog posts and comments on topics, we had searchable structured arguments about simulations and their results all with assumptions defined from different perspectives, where one could see at a glance how different subsets of the community felt about the progress or completeness of different arguments or action plans (somewhat like a debate flow diagram), where even a year of two later one could go back to an existing debate and expand on it with new ideas. As good as, say, Slashdot is, such a comprehensive open source sensemaking system would be to Slashdot as Slashdot is to a static webpage. It might help prevent so much rehashing the same old arguments because one could easily find and build on previous ones.
OpenPCAST itself could benefit through using such tools.
Such technologies have already been pioneered by SRI and others in SEAS, Angler, and the broader Genoa II project.
Related by (the, sadly, late) Tom Armour on Genoa II:
http://web.archive.org/web/200...
And a public memorial that mentions Tom Armour's loss to brain cancer (cancer being one of the biggest real killers of US Americans historically, along with strokes, heart disease, and diabetes):
http://web.archive.org/web/201...
If only those intelligence systems had also been able to help prevent or treat brain cancer (as well as other disasters, from the plague of obesity through the still ongoing BP Gulf oil leak disaster).
For example, we are beginning to understand how curing vitamin D deficiency and eating more fruits, vegetables, and legumes can help with prevention of many cancers and a host of other diseases, such as through the work of Dr. John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman and others in connecting the dots about vitamin D and nutrition and health. But why should such dedicated people trying to help all Americans (and other people) not have access to the best sensemaking tools tax dollars are creating to help with their work?
So, beyond national security implications, better FOSS intelligence tools
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.