US Govt Commits To Publish Publicly Financed Software Under FOSS

An anonymous reader writes: The White House has published a draft (PDF) for a Source Code Policy. The policy requires every public agency to publish their custom-build software as Free Software for other public agencies as well as the general public to use, study, share and improve the software. The Source Code Policy is intended for efficient use of US taxpayers' money and reuse of existing custom-made software across the public sector. It is said to reduce vendor lock-in of the public sector, and decrease duplicate costs for the same code which in return will increase transparency of public agencies. The custom-build software will also be published to the general public either as public domain, or as Free Software so others can improve and reuse the software. Looking at the exceptions, it appears the list excludes a number of interesting things. But what's remarkable here is that, by default, publicly financed software will now be deemed as open-source. That's a win.

Re:

[exomondo]

Most likely not, read the draft if you're interested:

Applicable exceptions are as follows:
1. The release of the item is restricted by another statute or regulation, such as the Export Administration Regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or the laws and regulations governing classified information;
2. The release of the item would compromise national security, confidentiality, or individual privacy;
3. The release of the item would create an identifiable risk to the stability, securit

Re:

[davester666]

So the source code to pretty much all software can't be published, because hackers can view the source and find more mind-numbingly boneheaded stupid vulnerabilities that they can exploit, even if the code isn't used in "front-facing" applications [as hackers commonly system-hop].

Re:

[exomondo]

Well yes, being more secure means the "many eyes" of open source also have to be white-hat hacker eyes.

Re: So, foreign governments can use it too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah they should use he json license. It prevents evil use of the software.

North Korea could have healthcare.gov Java

[raymorris]

Yep, North Korea would be able to use the 2.4 million lines of Java that makes up the bulk of healthcare.gov, if it had been developed under this policy. The US would then hope that NK actually tried to use it for something important.

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Conceivably, if the software fit their needs closely enough. However, isn't that a small price to pay for the taxpayers who paid for the software being able to use it; as well as any benefits derived from cooperative governments and organizations that decide that mainstreaming is more efficient than forking(I'm assuming that the license will be something MIT-like, not that commie GPL, so cooperation will be optional; but maintaining your own fork isn't something that people who dislike thankless busy work d

Re:

[mi]

"Gotta keep the other guy from getting what's mine!"

I say, it depends greatly on who exactly the "other guy" is...

This doesn't mean that we need to send Kim Jong Un a 'Nukes for Noobs' tutorial just to be nice

Are you sure, this is not going to happen, given our government's incredible efficiency in general and handling of classified materials in particular? What safeguards are you hoping to see in place to prevent it from happening?

rarely achieves excellence or greatness if they focus more on making sure th

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

That's a very smart thing to do

[Lieutenant_Dan]

I've worked on a bunch of contract at various levels of government and I'm always shocked to see how belligerent and protective departments or groups can be with their code and applications. There's been so many times when I get hired to do something that after spending a day or two there, that I discovered that another department has done the exact same thing. What follows is my recommendation to leverage what they have in-house already rather than whip something up. What always follows after is weeks of

ITAR

[jittles]

I see that, as I expected, ITAR is a valid excuse to withhold software from the public. I bet that most DoD specific projects would qualify for this exception. I have never worked on a DoD project that was not covered by ITAR, but all the software I've written for the USG was specific to weapon systems so I suppose that should come as no surprise.

Re:

[airdrummer]

and since ITAR defines s/w as arms, the right to root ur iphone is protected under the 2nd amendment;-)

Can't wait to see the quality of the documentation

[tacroy]

The only thing worst than normal OS documentation is mandated OS documentation...

Re:

[FatdogHaiku]

Section 26:
Functions

getRandomNumber()
https://xkcd.com/221/ [xkcd.com]

Sweet

[liqu1d]

I can start my own dragnet!

Hackers are Delighted!

[CAOgdin]

Now, hackers won't have to deal with that pesky machine code to find the loopholes; they can look for intriguing bits of source code first. Should do wonders for the security of Government-held data, don't you think?

On the other hand, we can hope that "white hats" will do the same...but what's THEIR incentive to help government systems become even more secure? A bounty program would be nice...but not in a time when austerians are on the ascent!

Re: Hackers are Delighted!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe requiring the code to be open will mean that a bit more attention is paid to making it secure. We can hope, at least.

Re:Isn't this already the law?

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

You are referring to code produced by a government employee. This applies to products that the federal government pays a contractor to develop, the government is now supposed to include language in the contract stating the government owns the produced code and the code will be released into the public domain. You would be shocked about how much code the US Government has paid for but which the contractor claims to still own. Lots of code that runs our weapons systems is supposedly owned by the company that was paid to produce the code.