Basque Country Gov't Decrees State-Produced Software Should Be Open Sourced

New submitter lsatenstein writes with this snippet from The H:"The regional government of Spain's Basque Country has decreed that all software produced for Basque government agencies and public bodies should be open sourced. Joinup, the European Commission's open source web site, cites an article in Spanish newspaper El Pais [English translation], saying that the only exceptions will be software that directly affects state security and a handful of projects which are being conducted in conjunction with commercial software suppliers."

Re:Europe, bad?

[tepples]

Except this is already policy in the United States. All computer programs that are "works of the United States Government" enter the public domain upon publication. This includes the VistA electronic medical record system developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Plenty of hospitals use VistA [wikipedia.org], which is written in MUMPS, because that's better than not knowing whether a patient has had the shot for mumps.

google for "open basque"

[Bazman]

Everyone do a google image search for "Open Basque"...

That's what I call open sauce.

Re:Europe, bad?

[amoeba1911]

That's because the Federal Reserve Bank is not part of the U.S. Government.

Re:Europe, bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html

CIA Factbook

EU Economy

GDP (purchasing power parity):
$15.39 trillion (2011 est.)
country comparison to the world: 1

(Hint: the last part is the important part. "country comparison to the world: 1" 1 means one. first.)

No, most US funded software not OSS

[dwheeler]

No, you're completely wrong, this is not the current policy of the United Stated federal government.

It's true that when a US government employee develops software, as part of his official duties, it is not subject to copyright in the US (with a few tiny exceptions). But that doesn't mean it actually gets released to the public; in almost all cases it is never released to the public. (Sometimes it does, like expect and Security-Enhanced Linux, but most of the time it doesn't). Even more importantly: most software developed using government funding is developed by contractors, not by government employees, in in most cases the rule about government employees doesn't apply anyway.

For the details of when software funded by the US government can be released as OSS, see this:"Publicly Releasing Open Source Software Developed for the U.S. Government" by Dr. David A. Wheeler (me), Journal of Software Technology, February 2011, Vol. 14, Number 1 [thedacs.com].

Now it's true that a few small parts of the US government do have such a policy. In particular, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's source code policy does share the code with the public at no charge by default [consumerfinance.gov].

I do agree that when "we the people" pay for the development of software, then by default "we the people" should get it (unless there's a good reason for an exception, e.g., it's a classified weapon system). Sounds like a good idea. It's even a good idea for the government itself, because it will greatly enable competition for future work (building on past work) and reduce redevelopment (because it'll be easier to find previously-developed stuff). But that's something people need to press for... don't assume it's already happened.

Ask for "release government-funded software as OSS by default" - don't assume it's already happened.