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United States Software Government Politics

Government Code Collaborative Falls Short 76

Posted by michael from the unclear-on-the-concept dept.
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."
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Government Code Collaborative Falls Short More

Government Code Collaborative Falls Short

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  • Hmmm.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by modifried ( 605582 )
    GOCC also stands for Great Ohio Coaster Club. Coincidence? I think not. Someone's taking us for a ride.

    • Re:Hmmm.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by jacksonj04 ( 800021 )
      Not really all that offtopic...

      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)

        by revolvement ( 742502 )
        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?

        Are you new to bureaucracy?

  • Is it me, or... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sein ( 803257 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @07:13AM (#10995594) Journal
    did we just Slashdot a government site?

  • Getting it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @07:17AM (#10995602)
    The point is not to infuse bureaucracy into open source, it is to use open source in government.

    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.

    • Will your tax dollars actually produce OS code, or will they just fund an organisation which goes "Ooh, we use Open Source! Look at us!"?

    • Hah! Not so easy, dude! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      >The point is not to infuse bureaucracy into open source, it is to use open source in government.

      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

      • It sucks, but restrictive laws are necessary to avoid corruption.

        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):

        Sen. Carona: ~ Again, I don't understand why you all are so threatened by [the bill], but from a careful look at the lobbyists in this room that are representing Microsoft, and all of you here representing proprietary software companies which -- let's face it, that's where the big money is, i

        • Re:You say you've worked in the public sector? (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          >>> It sucks, but restrictive laws are necessary to avoid corruption.
          > 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
        • Think of it this way. Should all publically produced code be open sourced? Think really hard about that and I think you will discover at least two cases where it shouldn't:

          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,
          • Acutally, 1) is not a valid case against open sourcing. Opening the source to something nobody could care about still helps in the instance of historical examination of the data the code work with.

            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.
            • No, actually 1 is a valid reason. Open sourcing code takes energy. I've got tons of code I write for work that isn't in shape to make sense even to release it through our internal processes at work (which are on an order of difficulty with starting a sourceforge project). The code was written to help me do my job, quick and dirty, and it was never worth while to massage it into utility for anyone else.
          • 2) This code contains information that for a variety of reasons is confidential (security, personal privacy, etc).

            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
    • No, there are lots of things that the government is the domain expert on (or, more globally, that governments are the domain experts on). Open source projects are created to scratch an itch (at least the successful ones) and who better to scratch than the itchee.

      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
    • They need to go backwards in order to go forwards. For government to produce an open source repository means they need to start at the begining i.e. at a place where the open source community was years ago in order to establish the expertise and experience in the handling of open source projects.

      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)

    by leonmergen ( 807379 ) *

    ... 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... :)

    • is it just me, or has this been failing more recently?
      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?
    • Can't one just do a permanent redirect in httpd.conf to redirect gocc.gov to www.gocc.gov?
      • The error leads me to believe that the site is a virtual host. The way my vhosting works (and I admit I don't know if this is the best way) is as follows:

        <IfModule mod_vhost_alias.c>
        UseCanonicalName off
        VirtualDocumentRoot /var/www/%-2
        </IfModule>

        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

        • I wonder if this is better than the way that I have handled the problem:
          <VirtualHost 192.168.1.14>
          Redirect permanent / http://www.domainname.org
          ServerName domainname.org
          </VirtualHost>
          This doesn't allow me to do what you mention with www2, etc. but solves the problem that I had, redirecting someone who types in domainname.org to www.domainname.org, which is where I want them.

      • 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...

  • Government Code Collaborative Falls Short

    [sarcasm] =-O [/sarcasm]


    -Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
  • ...if they actually had something useful there, and if it worked. And if they recognized that they are A government and not THE government.

  • This isn't really new (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know of two other psuedo open repositories another section of our government already has. These have been up for a couple of years and both are under utilized.

  • Mccarthy nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @08:53AM (#10995751) Journal
    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?

    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. /raises hand.

    • Re:Mccarthy nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)

      by qbzzt ( 11136 )
      Implying Governments are INHERENTLY bureaucratic is a myth, conversly, arguing that a PRIVATE firm (of any notable size) isnt just as complex is silly.

      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)

        by Coryoth ( 254751 )
        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. ... And presumably you get a huge bonus to.

        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
      • I think there is a smart way to do this.

        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.
      • Anything that gets too large loses site of it's primary goals and becomes it's own environment. Big companies tend to have internal groups that have no connection to the bigger concept of profit, but instead act as if the amount of money the company gets is guaranteed, and the only problem is how big their budget is relative to that "evil department over there". Heck, one defense company I worked for routinely attacked itself and tried to outbid itself one contracts.
        The same thing happens in government. On
    • > 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. /raises hand.

      Complexity is not the same as bureaucracy. Even in F1000 companies, bureaucracy is a bug, not a feature. (It's

    • Yes, but keep in mind that the United States Federal Government's bureacracy isn't as vast as you might think ... most of the time it's only half-vast.
    • This highlights a central conflict in government operations:

      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)

    by halothane ( 200070 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @09:16AM (#10995796)
    Have you ever heard the cliche about prisoners running the asylum?

    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.

  • ...like DARPA does with Cougaar [cougaar.org].

    Government sponsored open source is already here... good times!
    • "What they need is a GForge site instead"

      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
  • Just after the linuxjournal article is a reasonable response by Christopher Fowler, one of the participants. Basically he says that the GOCC is just a small part of open source use within government, that it's all volunteer, and that it has its own niche. Well, better see what he had to say, I'm probably mangling it beyond recognition. I get the picture that it's a positive but slow step in the right direction.

  • oh, stop complaining (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @09:47AM (#10995880)
    Yes, there are only five pieces of software. But they are under an open source license and you can download them. That's all as it should be.

    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)

    by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) <error@ioe[ ]r.us ['rro' in gap]> on Saturday December 04, 2004 @09:57AM (#10995905) Homepage Journal
    ...which is typical of government. Or any large bureaucracy for that matter.

    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)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @10:40AM (#10996007)
    this site
    http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Research/Software/
    has some cool looking stuff available.
    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)

    by superid ( 46543 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @10:51AM (#10996048) Homepage
    I've worked at a govt lab for over 20 years. Well over half our products are software (sometimes the rest seems to be powerpoint presentations). When I was hired I made inqueries to several other software development groups about "where are our common libraries? Where is the FFT I should use? where is our standard MLE routine? Where should I put the code for the detection algorithm that I just wrote?" There was no answer then and there is still no answer today. We have over 3000 people and not only do we not share libraries it is virtually impossible to actually exchange source.

    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)

      by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday December 04, 2004 @11:32AM (#10996217) Homepage
      You could do what Keith Packard did when he went to work for HP's Cambridge Research Lab: he said up-front "I will only work for you if all my code is open source."
      -russ
    • I also work at a government lab. I can say that within my division ~150 engineers & scientists, we do have a central cvs repository. We don't have a very good system for diseminating information about the contents of that cvs repository. It's fairly well organized, so you can search through it, but mostly it's best to just ask around. Code is often shared between projects.

      Unfortunately our division is only about 25% of the entire organizations, and their is no sharing between divisions and I think
  • Opening the source of government written software is the right thing to do: taxpayer dollars spent, so taxpayers should get the software. On my short list, government software that is well-known/useful to me:

    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)

    by alset_tech ( 683716 ) on Saturday December 04, 2004 @01:52PM (#10996805) Homepage
    Am I the only one who looked at this and thought,

    "Well, this gated and restrictive open-source government suppository fits."

  • Is it really that hard for the government to put together a small agency under the Library of Congress that keeps a federal record of all code projects and receives updates from every department? All that would have to be done to keep it up to date would be for the Congress to require each department that does its own IT work to keep in contact with the agency in each appropriations bill for new software projects.

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