Government Code Collaborative Falls Short 76
Tom Adelstein writes "This story starts off singing the praises of the Government Open Code Collaborative, then reminds the reader: you discover that it has built one more bureaucracy to oversee its existing bureaucracy, with oversight over the new bureaucracy. Have you ever heard the cliche about prisoners running the asylum? Well, this gated and restrictive open-source government repository fits."
Hmmm.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:3, Informative)
The 'software' I looked at had bits in the blurbs about "To be released Summer 2004" and "Available September 2004". Now, tell me if my clock is wrong, but aren't they like 3 months behind there?
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:1, Funny)
Are you new to bureaucracy?
Is it me, or... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is it me, or... (Score:1)
It looks like the entire DNS server is down... now that sounds like something Slashdot is *not* resposible for - how much load should a DNS server require for a single domain ?
Re:Is it me, or... (Score:5, Informative)
Getting it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
The govenrnment does not need to do more iota more than this: make it's code open source; be receptive to using open source and accepting open source contributions.
We the open source community get the fruits what we paid tax dollars to produce, and the government doesn't waste money on redundant proprietary code. Everybody wins. Adding bureaucracy to something that is clearly a partnership with the community is just dumb.
Re:Getting it backwards (Score:1)
Hah! Not so easy, dude! (Score:1, Informative)
Always a good idea, albeit not always possible...
I'm sorry, but your comment is not insightful. It might be "outsightful", as I can only suspect you never held a public position.
>The governnment does not need to do more iota more than this: make it's code open source; be receptive to using open source and accepting open source contributions.
What is "the government"? You talk as if it were a whole, a bea
You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bzzzt! If that were the case, then there would be no corruption.
Let me quote from an exchange from a hearing on Texas' SB 1579 [newsforge.com] (the Open-Source bill):
Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:1, Insightful)
> Bzzzt! If that were the case, then there would be no corruption.
You assume the world is exact like Computing Science. Well, it's not. Laws exist and people deliberately ignore them (heck, some will even disobey a law just because it exists!)
Good people follow the laws and this hampers their good intentions. Bad people try to circumvent restrictive laws and that is why corruption exists.
> Let me quote from an exchange fr
Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:2)
1) No one else could possible care about this code.
The majority of the code written anywhere is this way. It's a one off to solve a particular problem that is not shared by others in a way that would allow reusing your code.
2) This code contains information that for a variety of reasons is confidential (security, personal privacy,
Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:2)
Otherwise we tend to find a whole pile of data we no longer know how to access, sometimes even to the point of knowing whether it was important or not.
Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:2)
Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:2)
Totally wrong. The security and privacy are BENEFITs of Open Source, not penalties. All real security researchers know that a published system is safer than a secret one.
Plus there's the whole related matter of trust and accountability (as exemplified by the dispute about vote-counting software). All 4 of these points are better accomplished with open source. Closed source allows incorrec
Re:Getting it backwards (Score:2)
This is not the way to do it, however.
The right way to go about letting government build open source software is to have a very small organization that approves projects (e.g. clearing a project as releasable and not a national security risk like
Re:Getting it backwards (Score:1)
Bearing in mind in the government's handling open source and it's distribution they take on a much greater responsibility (taking into account the greater responsibility to society - well at least they are meant t
The good link... (Score:2, Informative)
... go to www.gocc.gov [gocc.gov] instead - they apparantly don't know how to set DNS servers at the government, and require a www. in front... :)
Re:The good link... (Score:1)
I've been frustrated of late by such a silly thing that I'm sure didn't used to happen.
Or am I missing another automatic "feature" of internet explorer?
Re:The good link... (Score:1)
Re:The good link... (Score:1)
Its my proxy that screws up and not firefox!
It returns a html error page, so firefox thinks it found the site and renders it.
mental note: never underestimate firefox
Re:The good link... (Score:2)
Re:The good link... (Score:1)
This allows me to add a directory to /var/www/ with the domain of the site minus the TLD and voila, Apache can serve it up without being restarted. And 8191.net, www.8191.net, etc all point to the same thing. Now there might be problems with this a
Re:The good link... (Score:2)
Re:The good link... (Score:1)
Sheesh, when you're doing that, can't you just make gocc.gov a ServerAlias of www.gocc.gov ?
Sounds a lot better to me, and is far more commonly used...
shocker (Score:2)
[sarcasm] =-O [/sarcasm]
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
It could be very useful (Score:1)
This isn't really new (Score:1, Interesting)
Mccarthy nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone who works in a Fortune 1000 company, please raise your hand. Anyone who thinks that their employer COULDNT be any more bureauratic please raise their hand.
Implying Governments are INHERENTLY bureaucratic is a myth, conversly, arguing that a PRIVATE firm (of any notable size) isnt just as complex is silly. The Short: All big systems are complex and byzantine.
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:1, Insightful)
Government is often more bueraucratic, but often because it HAS TO in order to meet basic criteria for democratic oversight and control. The larger a corporation the more of the similar oversight issues pop
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:1, Informative)
Thank you.
Anyway, I work in a state run organization as an IT wonk.. and our teeth to tail ration is extremely high (i.e. we support a diverse range of systems and people on a skeleton crew).. and somehow everybody th
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2)
-russ
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
First, very few private firms are the size of even a state government.
Second, businesses are motivated to be more efficient. If you're a CEO and you slash beaurocracy effectively (that is, cut expenses without cutting value), you lower expenses and raise profits. That's supposed to result in your $tock option$ being more valuable.
If you are a politician a
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you're a CEO and you're smart, when the going is good you pad the company out with layers and layers of middle management so that when the going gets tough you can "cut the fat", manage to impressively raise profits for the quarter, and get your huge bon
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2)
If the politician make a rule which says.
If an employe make a suggestion which
make the system more effective then they
get half the saving in the first year as a bonus.
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2)
The same thing happens in government. On
Fedland vs. The Real Thing (Score:2)
>
>Implying Governments are INHERENTLY bureaucratic is a myth, conversly, arguing that a PRIVATE firm (of any notable size) isnt just as complex is silly. The Short: All big systems are complex and byzantine.
Complexity is not the same as bureaucracy. Even in F1000 companies, bureaucracy is a bug, not a feature. (It's
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2)
Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:1)
How can you be both efficient in operations, and accountable to the desires of the People?
There are plenty of government acquisitions programs (present and past) that have come in on cost, on schedule, and performing to spec. Most of these are/were limited in dollar amount (reduces regulatory oversight requirements) and/or political visibility.
Idioms, idioms, idioms .... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I did not. I thought it was the inmates running the asylum. Or may be I am mistaken and Ken Kesey was more accurate regarding conditions in American mental hospitals.
Quote from "Catch me if you can" (Score:2)
Re:Idioms, idioms, idioms .... (Score:1)
What they need is a GForge site instead.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Government sponsored open source is already here... good times!
Re:What they need is a GForge site instead.... (Score:2)
Hmmm, decisions, decisions...
Option 1: Install sourceforge, host the respositary, job done.
Option 2: Private non-profit U.S. academic institutions can also become members by signing the GOCC Operating Agreement through an authorized representative. The signatory or their designee can then appoint additional members within their institutions. People belonging to a government entity or private non-profit academic institution that has not signed the Operating Agreeme
Christopher Fowler's reply (Score:2, Interesting)
oh, stop complaining (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you have to go through paperwork in order to participate in the project. So what? Every open source effort has some gatekeepers that decide who can participate and what they can contribute. When it comes to government, you can't have a Linux or Theo just making decisions, you actually have to have paperwork, because we have open government that needs to be transparent, not a monarchy. See the connection? Democracy, openness, record keeping? Records and paperwork are the price we pay for openness. In most cases, that paperwork is not just a good idea, it is required because we, the people, passed laws to require it.
GOCC probably will not succeed in its current form. But people are at least interested and trying and that's a good thing. If you have good ideas and are interested, I'm sure you could find a way to participate.
Instead, of course, you are just using this effort as a soapbox to complain and whine. Ditto for Tom Adelstein, the author of the LJ piece, which is also full of tirades and platitudes, but empty of ideas and solutions.
The open source movements needs contributors, not whiners. If have ideas for how to improve GOCC or build something similar with less bureaucracy, present them. Even better, get involved in the project: talk to your local government, run for office, get something on the ballot, etc. Government really is no different from an open source project: things only change if you contribute. Whining and complaining will just piss people off, and if there is too much of it, you endanger the entire project.
Good idea, bad implementation... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea behind open source is "open," and that's the part GOCC lacks. Nobody can contribute to it without significant restrictions like accepting liability for the code. Open source has NO WARRANTY for a reason. You want a warranty or technical support, you buy it. In addition they have provided no way to build a community around their offerings.
GOCC is virtually unchanged from when I looked at it six months ago, and I wouldn't be too surprised if everybody just kind of ignored it.
another example of "openness" (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Research/Software/
But you have to jump through hoops to get it.
In fact, I think that there will always be a problem with "US government" and "open source" at the same time, specifically that the government doesnt want stuff it writes internally (or has written for it by a contractor and owns copyright for) released to people, organizations and countries on that list of "people, organizations and countries we dont like right now" that it has somewhere. (the one places like cuba & iran and people like bin laden are on) because those people, organizations or countries might use this unspecified code to do unspecified "bad things".
Its the same thinking as to why there are still encryption export regulations in the US right now.
Government and Sharing Software (Score:5, Interesting)
When we hear rumors of someone elses code that might possibly be useful (and this happens infrequently, and unofficially via the grapevine) we have to make "official" requests through an unfortunately large hierarchy. We are usually met with "why do you want this? This was developeed with funds from program XYZ and you can't use it. This model has not been validated and we can't release it...."
And this is internal to ONE organization! When we make similar requests to our external sister labs of equal size and bureaucratic depth the problem scales exponentially.
It's very frustrating and I wish I could come up with a way to fix it.
Re:Government and Sharing Software (Score:4, Insightful)
-russ
Re:Government and Sharing Software (Score:1)
Unfortunately our division is only about 25% of the entire organizations, and their is no sharing between divisions and I think
Re:GOCC (Score:1)
Government software helping the rest of the world (Score:2)
1. PubMed's e-utils [nih.gov]
2. NIST software [nist.gov], which includes OCR, and handprint recognition software, and fingerprint imaging software.
Hm (Score:3, Funny)
"Well, this gated and restrictive open-source government suppository fits."
A code repository for the entire government (Score:2)