[Discuss] Govt Source Code Policy

[Greg Rundlett (freephile)]

Code written by Govt. employees is 'Public Domain', meaning specifically
exempted from copyright.

However, most? government software is written by contractors, and not
published or shared.  I don't know for sure, but I imagine that a large
amount of that work is under a proprietary license.  I think it's a giant
step in the right direction to get the Govt. to publish, and reuse (our)
software because we are paying for it once already.  However, I think that
the primary beneficiaries will be the software ISVs and VARs that will
essentially have another 'github' of govt. software to grab and bring
in-house.  The same problem is reflected at GitHub where the majority of
new projects are selecting non-free licenses now whereas a few years ago
GPL was the most popular license in the world.

See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html
See license list at https://github.com/new
See global license popularity at
https://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses
(their data may be skewed or unreliable)
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government


Greg Rundlett
https://eQuality-Tech.com
https://freephile.org

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 4:24 PM, Mark Komarinski <mkomarinski at wayga.org>
wrote:

> I was under the impression that code written by the government was public
> domain.  You and I (and private companies) paid the taxes that generated
> that code, so releasing it in anything less than a public domain is doing a
> disservice.
>
> Back when I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs there were
> companies that took the VA code, modified it for non-VA hospitals, and
> offered to provide the software and support for a fee.  I didn't find a
> problem with it then, nor do I now.  That's what public domain means.
>
> -Mark
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com>
> Date: 3/25/16 3:33 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: blu <discuss at blu.org>, GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
> Subject: Govt Source Code Policy
>
> The US Fed. Govt. is proposing a pilot program to release at least 20% of
> newly developed custom code as 'OSS'.  https://sourcecode.cio.gov/
>  They're accepting comments now.  And since it's hosted on GitHub, you
> "comment" via the issue queue, and you can also fork the project and issue
> a pull request.
>
> I forked it and created a pull request.
> https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/pulls proposing to use
> the term 'Free Software' in place of 'Open Source'
>
> If the government actually goes through with 'open sourcing' their work,
> it's actually a giant corporate handout because companies will have greater
> access to publicly funded works that they can then incorporate into
> proprietary works.
>
> What do you think?
>
>
> Greg Rundlett
> https://eQuality-Tech.com
> https://freephile.org
>