Congress Members Oppose GPL for Government Research 822
An anonymous reader writes "Rep Jim Davis(D-FL), Tom Davis (R-Va), Ron Kind (D-WI), and Adam Smith (D-WA) are trying to outlaw the gpl. Let's write to them and show them that we didn't elect these guys to screw us over." The issue here isn't the GPL in general, it's specifically what sort of license government-funded research ought to have. Code written directly by Federal government employees has no copyright whatsoever and is therefore roughly equivalent to a BSD-type license; but if the government pays a non-employee to write code, there are no firm requirements or guidelines on how that code ought to be licensed. Prudence suggests that since it's our money funding the research, we ought to make sure the public gets some return from the endeavor.
Donations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Donations (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Donations (Score:3, Interesting)
Where is a good place to find out who funded various Congressmen? With a system like there is in the states it would be nice to find out the 'reasons' that Congresmen support certan ideas.
Re:Donations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Donations (Score:4, Funny)
You have to give them credit for subtlety. Insisting that the taxpayer receive some value from the code cleverly ignores the value of the code itself.
Of course, having seen a few lines of taxpayer-funded code, disclosing some of the 'less mature' examples thereof might not help the funding drives of any politicians...
Re:Donations (Score:3, Informative)
1 Computer Equipment & Services $40,250
ADAM SMITH (D-WA)
Top Contributors
1 Microsoft Corp $22,900
The other two don't seem to stand out like these two do.
Re:Donations (Score:5, Informative)
Adam Smith: 2002 Politician Profile [opensecrets.org]
Top Contributors:
(1) Microsoft Corp $22,900
which is more than the next two biggest, combined.
Notable quote from front page:
To be fair, if this guy wasn't pushing MS anti-GPL in DC, he wouldn't be doing a very good job of representing his constituency...
Go to the front page [opensecrets.org] and "Search By Individual Donor" on Microsoft. Sort by size of "donation" (I'm quite certain "political donation" is an oxymoron - political investment might be a better term). It's quite informative.
There's an arena in which Free Software performance will never match commercial...
Re:Donations (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a more accurate title would be - Congress Members Support Campaign Contributors.
I mean seriously, this is the US - is anyone that surprised? Politicians can be bought, and MS has damn deep pockets.
-- james
GPL is WRONG for government (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Informative)
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:4, Interesting)
Income taxes? $3,684,000,000 [yahoo.com] for the year ended June 30, 2000. Or were you talking about sales and other taxes?
Very very interesting (by the way the figures you give are for 2002, not 2000). MS's total revenue has increased by $6 billion over the last three years, but their tax bill has decreased by over $1.2 billion (i.e. since George W. got into the Whitehouse - I'd be interested to see a breakdown on the taxes to see why). However, net income is down $1.6 billion dollars, despite vastly improved revenue and lower taxes.
No wonder MS is worried about the GPL :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:5, Insightful)
Most companies can't use GPL'd code in their products.
No.
Only if they want to keep the code extensions secret and if they want to distribute to others can they not use the GPL.
There is absolutely no problem with companies using GPL'd code in their products if they freely disclose their modified source code.
Alternatively, they can keep the code extensions secret and use the modified code internally as much as they like.
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if they want to keep the code extensions secret and if they want to distribute to others can they not use the GPL.
Why should "they" (actually it's "we") be forced to release the source code to the changes we distribute?
Government produced work should be public domain, not GPL.
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:5, Insightful)
Do companies share the same rights as citizens?
Aren't companies solely a bunch of people combined by a collective goal?
In a democracy, the goverment is not a company which has to serve it's clients. It is a representation of the people. Such a goverment has no obligation to companies, only to the majority of the people.
This is often a common goal, but not necessarily one.
Where does the money come from anyway?
Would it be wrong, to say it comes from the people?
> Most companies can't use GPL'd code in their products.
This may be true. But most companies still can use GPLed code for their products.
Most companies don't earn money by writing code, they earn it by using code.
Now, considering that it is about contract work, it begs the question, isn't that relatively specialised software anyway?
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:5, Insightful)
A BSD-like license is a better license for governmental projects, because it does give everybody the same rights to the code which was developed with public funds.
The GPL on the other hand makes certain restrictions which would be difficult for both the governmental entity and all redistributors to follow.
Say for example, that a government entity contracts a piece of software for counting ducks. And they provide it to all of the state entities for their fish and game departments to use in developing their own duck counting system. In turn, the states take the duck counting code, modify it for their own uses, and provide the binaries for the various agencies and private groups within the state that cares about duck populations. You now have the original code that the government provided, and you have 50 different versions of the code from the states. What are the odds that somewhere down the line, one of those states will forget (or be unwilling) to publish the code, or unintentially break one of the other provisions of the GPL?
With a BSD like license, this isn't a problem. The government can provide the code to the states, and they can modify the code to their choosing, but are under no obligations regarding the code.
In both cases, the goal of distributing government contracted code is fullfiled, but only the BSD provides a way for all citizens to be able to use the code without restrictions.
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Insightful)
No, what is going to happen is it will get to somebody who says "oh here it is in this email. Now go away". And the GPL will be obeyed.
But this outlaws contributions to *existing* GPL (Score:3, Insightful)
This law prevents Government agencies from contributing to existing GPL projects. The Government can't just waltz in and say "if you want our enhancements, you have to relicense your code".
So, exactly who is it 'fair' to when you disallow the Government to contribute to, say, Linux or Mozilla, etc.
Maybe various GPL projects should switch to dual licensing. Keep the code GPL'd, but make it available for a (large) fee under a license that allows incorporation into closed-source projects but disallows changes. All GPL'd enhancements become immediately available to the closed-source guys too, but they can't 'embrace and extend'.
It would be quite interesting to find out just how eager the closed-source guys would be to get their hands on the code if they can't use it to exclude others.
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:5, Insightful)
1. What license should government funded projects use: the answer is, of course, the same as has always been the case: none. Government funded development is by default Public Domain and always should be!
2. Should government dollars be spent (ala NSA extensions to Linux security) to modify GPLed software? Answer: yes, but only where it makes sense. The way MS wants this argument to go is this: Gov$$ should not go to GPLed programs; NSA cannot update Linux (as an example); Linux cannot be made secure to NSA specs; Govt cannot use Linux. The (I hope) obvious solution is that the NSA can make mods to GPLed software, just as they have been known to make mods to proprietary software. The diffs are, of course, theirs. They wrote the code, they own it. If they feel that it's not a matter of national security, they can release the code diffs (without context, of course) as Public Domain, just as schools used to release UNIX security and bugfix diffs. The derived product will, of course, be under the GPL. No problems here. (see #4 for why this is a bit of a red herring argument)
3. Should Govt be allowed to use open source software and specifically GPLed software. Yes, certainly. There is no more restriction on GPLed software than proprietary software. In fact, since you're not allowed to distribute mods to proprietary software at all, it's much more open. If the government chooses to use BSD or GNU/Hurd or Linux or whatever, they certainly should. Integration should be opened for the normal RFP/bidding process, of course. Proprietary software must be able to compete in the market fairly, but so must free/open software!
4. Here comes the really ugly one: should govt. be allowed to modify software. Yep, that's what Microsoft really wants to ask. They want the govt to not be able to code, and thus be totally dependant on software companies. Bottom line: this is why open source software exists. Choice, period.
This is a non-argument if you apply sufficient logic, folks. Don't let yourself get lead into a license debate when what's really going on is MS trying to strong-arm congress into disallowing open source software in government.
GPL congress! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:GPL congress! (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you doing on Nov 5th?
(For my compatriots...) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:GPL congress! (Score:5, Insightful)
you ask it to do something, but before it gets done it has to get approved by microsoft and the "content providers"
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why it should be BSD licensed.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Using publically funded code should not REQUIRE you to submit changes, because you helped pay for the creation of the aformentioned code.
BSD is closer to public domain than GPL, and Government-funded code SHOULD be public domain.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be BSD licence for the taxpayers who paid for it, and GPL for everyone else in the world. That's fair because everyone only pays once but does pay, whether in cash or in contributed code.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Informative)
It's never the license that denies you rights. Licenses can only license you rights.
The only truly public license is no copyright.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of this, with a BSD-style license you get a 'copy and forget' style of proprietary software development. "Yes, those research boys probably know what they were doing, let's just copy the source and make money out of it." This is a really solid way of getting crappy products out.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Take that, Canada! mwahahaha...
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Interesting)
BSD all the way baybee. There is no logical reason why using government-generated code should obligate one to make one's own code freely available, because we have already paid for it through taxation.
Then there is no problem. Most code produced using government funding is available free for the asking, with no license and no terms, under the Freedom Of Information Act. Why screw things up by adding a license?
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Internet Explorer is descended from Mosaic. They purchased the rights to use the Mosaic code and then gave IE away for free. This destroyed both the value of the Mosaic source code (who else was going to license the rights if they could get the IE derivative for free), and it also helped destroy Netscape. Since many of the early Netscape employees had contributed to Mosaic I imagine that they were pretty ticked off to see that happen. If Mosaic had been licensed under the GPL, then the browser wars would almost certainly have turned out differently. For one thing, I would probably be browsing the web with a descedent of Mosaic instead of a Mozilla descendent (Galeon).
Mosaic is not a very good example of the benefits of a BSD-style license. TCP/IP is a much better example.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard this was due to a clause in the contract saying MS had to pay a pecentage of the revenue from IE to Mosaic. I imagine they had dollar signs in their eyes when they wrote that contract and did not imagine the lengths MS would go to screw them.
They found out the hard way.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what would have happened in the alternate universe that's the subject of this thread, but in our reality MS had little to do with the popularity of the Internet. It was Netscape all the way.
MS believed for a long time that they could create their own network along the same lines as AOL, but since MSN would be bundled with the OS, it would become absolutely dominent. If the Microsoft vision had come true, the Internet as we know it would enjoy the same popularity today as Linux does on the desktop.
Gates even said once that he couldn't understand why anybody would use HTML rather than just serializing Windows API calls.
Once it become clear that the Internet would be the "one true network" Microsoft finally woke up and crushed Netscape.
Contract code (Score:4, Informative)
Code that is written under contract to the Federal Government is the property of the Federal Government. It is not, to paraphrase, sold back to the Government so you pay twice for the same code. That issue has come up on every contract I've worked on. And when the code is owned by the Feds, if they want to re-use it for another Fed project they can. It's their code. It happens a lot.
Not anti-GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R&D
The DoD funded the initial development of GNAT, now the GNU Ada Compiler, and mandated that it would be released under the GPL. GNAT is currently maintained by Ada Core Technology, a commercially successful company.
Apparently, the GPL does neither prevent nor discourage commercial adoption.
Re:Not anti-GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not anti-GPL (Score:5, Interesting)
HP, IBM and SGI have all used large amounts of BSD-licensed code and NOT given away their improvements to it.
Just because a company's used a license at one point is not evidence it fines it "easier to work with".
They'll do whatever suits them commercially at any given time, and both can be useful to them dependant upon the situation.
IBM, btw, is noted for handling GPL'd code as if it were "barely sub-critical nuclear waste", to quote on of their ex-employees, to wit, Terry Lambert.
Government code should be BSDL, IMHO. Let those who would develop it further reap the benefits as they see fit. If they feel it's to their advantage to give away the result they can -- they can even GPL it.
Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
This will satisfy everyone from RMS to Bill Gates.
Re:Public Domain (Score:3, Insightful)
Public domain is NOT the same as Free software. It's nowhere NEAR Free software. With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
This makes Bill happy as a pig in the mud because he can take what I wrote (or paid for with my taxes), embrace, extend, and sell back to me. This means I'm paying twice for it, as I already paid for it with my taxes.
This is exactly the kind of crap that RMS is trying to stop. With Free software, you cannot embrace and extend it unless you give the source code back with it. This means that you can't make software that is intentionally incompatible with other stuff, because people can just look at the source and make new, compatible software.
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have a problem with a federal policy requiring the fruits of new research being released into the public domain (or under an MIT/BSD style license). But I would have a problem with a policy that would disallow federal participation in existing GPL projects. Why should the government be forced to re-invent the wheel when there are perfectly serviceable GPL wheels out there?
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what I don't understand about all these GPL arguments. It's just like the file sharing argument - I haven't stolen this mp3, because you still have it. I haven't deprived you of it. So in the same way, if I take your GPL'd code and use it in a way that you don't like, what's the problem? You still have the code and you can still do what you like with it.
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
Every piece of software I've ever written goes into the public domain. If Bill Gates ever wants to borrow a snippet of code thats his business, if RMS wants to borrow a snippet of code thats his business. They don't tell me how I can use my code and I don't tell them how they can use their code. What's wrong with that?
Re:Public Domain (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever even bothered to look at the list of GPL compatible licenses? [gnu.org] And I quote:
Public Domain. Being in the public domain is not a license--rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain status is compatible with the GNU GPL.
Re:Public Domain (Score:3, Insightful)
Psst.. T'is not your code, it is code paid for with public funds.
Government release A.tgz as public domain.
Even if proprietary software vendors develop and release restricted license versions of A, you are still free to take A.tgz and develop a GPL-licensed branch.
Re:Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes. Public domain is considerably more free than "Free software".
With public domain, anyone can take my code and change the license and sell it to me with a restrictive license.
Yes, and that's part of the freedom. You know, freedom doesn't apply only to things you approve of. It also means freedom to do things which you don't like.
If it's in public domain, it's not *your* code any more. Anyone can take and do anything he wants with it, including making a commercial closed-source product being sold for money. That's perfectly fine. That's part of freedom.
This makes Bill happy as a pig in the mud because he can take what I wrote (or paid for with my taxes), embrace, extend, and sell back to me.
Well, don't buy it. I mean, you have the code, right? It's there in the public domain, you can do whatever you want with it. Why would you pay money to Billg if the code is free?
I think your idea of "freedom" is very screwed up. GPL is actually quite a restrictive license, it's just that it is restrictive in other than the usual ways. Freedom means the ability to make meaningful choices, even if you don't like the choice I make and even if you think it's a bad choice for the future/society/environment/children/etc.
So, yes, public research should be in public domain.
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL is a way of protecting your work from reuse by people who don't extend the same rights to you. It is an important way of getting people who are writing software for personal reasons to release it to the public. In the case of work contracted by the government, that isn't necessary, because the programmer is paid for the work. The government also doesn't want to retain access to derived works; they've generally made the software sufficient for their purposes, and their mandate is to make their software available to everybody.
Re:Public Domain (Score:3, Insightful)
And the US government wants to take away my freedom to murder other people... DAMN that US government!
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Insightful)
IF TAXPAYER_ID IN SPECIAL_FRIENDS_OF_GOVT THEN
TOTAL TAXES = 0.00
TOTAL_REFUND = 10 * TOTAL_CAMPAIGN_CONTRIBUTIONS
GOTO NEXT_TAXPAYER
END IF
All Joe Q Hacker could do with the "source" to the IRS software would be to uncover and publicize little gems like that
Security Through Obscurity... doomed to fail (Score:4, Interesting)
But if everyone knows that everything is open, there is a much better chance that before Joe Q. Hacker gets to the bank the check is bad and there are some police waiting for him.
However if Joe Q. Hacker *JUST SO HAPPENS* to work for the gov't contractor that made the IRS's software he knows the ins and outs and backdoors.
And no one else does.
And this goes unnoticed until Joe has retired to jamaica with his ill-gotten gains.
Sorry, but my FUD is just trying to counteract your FUD. You are arguing for temporary security. N'existe pas. (man am I gonna get slammed for that! Sorry folks, it's been 12 years since I took french)
So yeah, I really thought about that one. If Joe can bring down the economy in a few hours, chances are I can look at some trace hooks and take a dump of the box he "0wned", undo what he did, and reboot the economy before "Good Morning America" comes on.
Given the threat of "taking down the economy in a few hours" (do you write FUD for a living? You are very good!) the gov't will jump to it or be goaded to it by a merciless media.
Come now, I know this is government we are talking about, but lets be logical!
Re:Public Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
How the heck did this nonsense get modded up to +5? Having access to copies of the software used by the IRS would do absolutely nothing for Mr. Joe Q. Hacker unless he was able to modify it, penetrate IRS security, and install it on their machines, all the while evading internal financial audits. And if he can do that, he can presumably get the source regardless of whether it's released to the public. Otherwise, all he can do is play Mr. Taxman at home.
I'd really rather not give the average dink on the street access to, oh say, training simulations. (sniper, anyone?)
I hate to tell you this, but you can go to your local pawnshop and buy a rifle and spend time at the local range until you get good at it. It's not hard at all; it just takes a little practice. The number of people in the US whose marksmanship skills are on a par with the Beltway Sniper is probably well into the hundreds of thousands. Odds are that all of them practiced with real guns, because diddling around with your keyboard won't teach you shit about using a gun.
any reason why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who's idea was this? (Score:4, Informative)
I can think of one big company who'd stand to gain from this type of legislation...
flawed logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Not just flawed, but deeply so. "Our money" funds a lot of things that we don't have direct access too--many things that we SHOULD not have access to. Lets face it, some government software, regardless of who writes it, should not be open sourced.
I, for one, would like to take a ride in a spy plane that I'm sure some of my money went for.
Need more info (Score:4, Interesting)
If they are arguing that governement developed software may be given a proprietary licence but may not be given a GPL licence then I emphatically disagree.
Ummmmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ummmmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Relevent links (Apologies in advance for the karma whoring
Adam Smith's Statement on Technology and the New Economy [house.gov]
Press Release for "E-Genda 2002" [house.gov]
New Democrats E-Genda 2002 (full text) [house.gov]
Lister: "Knowledge is Power" -- who said that?
Rimmer: I don't know
LawMeme Rips Apart the Note and Letter (Score:5, Informative)
GPL Isn't Appropriate For Gov't Code (Score:5, Insightful)
The following is a quote from "Why you shouldn't use the Library GPL for your next library [gnu.org]":
Proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it.
Again, let me stress that I use the GPL, I like the GPL, I think more developers should use the GPL. But our government should not provide preferential treatment for one group of software developers over another. We don't like it when congress gives preferential treatment to Disney, and it is not appropriate for us to request preferential treatment over Adobe.
Very interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Very interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
2. It is my understanding that any code developed with Fed$$ is either 49/51 (or 50/50?) co-owned by the developer & the Fed, & either can use it as they wish from that point, subject, of course, to any contractual agreements, etc. If contractually allowed, the developer can resell the software. The Fed could conceivably re-use software components (which might be great idea), but generally they are more interested in the product than the parts.
3. There is no program that I know of that might have the capability to catalogue what Uncle Sammy has received and whether it might be of use to any other Fed. Dept, etc. Few areas of the Federal government, civilian or militay, at any given time, have any idea what any other non-affliated part of Uncle Sam has in the way of software or capabilities. Even if they did, it probably wouldn't foster re-use of anything other than the contractor. Might be an interesting area to explore.
Do have to agree... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I definitely think that the code should be public source. But what's wrong with using the LGPL?
Work funded with public monies should be available for all to use. Ideally, all work should be done in the fashion of libraries, rather than a standalone application. This screams for the LGPL to be used.
If work is done under the LGPL, then the libraries can be made public, while companies can make proprietary front-ends that utilize the public libraries. Should bug-fixes, or extensions be made to the library, then the library (and the entire community) benefit.
My main beef with the BSD license, is that once the general library is released to the public, a private company can take the library, and bastardize it however they want (ie: Microsoft & Kerberos). By using the LGPL, the changes must be returned to the public, thus ensuring the public trust.
Wealth transfer (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress is quite correct that the GPL would interfere with this congressional strategy of wealth transfer. Rather the GPL would keep public property in the public domain to be used by the public for the public. IMHO that is a far worthier goal than "increasing the government-private partnership".
It is no wonder he is a aol user! (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone should have this right... (Score:5, Interesting)
The BSD license is the fairest way to handle government code. Corporations are taxpayers too, and should have the same access to this code without having their own code forced open and their business model destroyed.
On the other hand, closing (non-classified) government code benefits no one. As taxpayers, we would be benefited by the availability of such code.
I think Bill Gates would very much like to see the end of the GPL in government code, but don't think he's out to ban OSS - remember, BSD-licensed code was used for implementing TCP/IP originally. MS likes to see government code too, and it is their right, just as it is ours.
As for the issue of non-Americans, you could license it strictly to Americans, but then how would you enforce that license? No country in the world is going to hold up a license which prohibits them from something another nation gets to have....
Who said anything about corporations? (Score:3, Insightful)
What the GPL would prevent is having someone take a government-contracted GPLed product, slap a gui front end on it (maybe even with a few silly interface pattents), and then sell the result with a do-not-copy, do-not-reverse-engineer license.
I'll grant you, that's an action corporations are more likely to take than individuals, but the corporate discrimination angle you're trying to play up is downright silly.
Frankly, the no GPL rule makes no sense without a similar rule against standard proprietary licenses; government contractors routinely develop code and then incorporate it into their own do-not-reverse-engineer programs. What happens in that case is that the government gets the code and a license to use it wherever they want internally, but they can't release it to non-governmental institutions.
Certainly the public gains less from that arrangement than it does from an identical arrangement that also allows the government to release said code to the public under the GPL.
Re:Who said anything about corporations? (Score:3)
The GPL imposes requirements on developers that it does not impose on end-users. When people talk about corporations, replace that word with developers, and it'll all start to make sense to you.
As far as your irrational fear of developers using work in their own product. You never lose the original.
Could hurt open-source too (Score:3, Interesting)
Jean-Marc
I agree - they should use BSD-style (Score:5, Interesting)
The most recent example of this was a set of nice Java random variable distribution libraries that I found and wanted to use for some code I was writing. However, they were under the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL which would have allowed me to use library calls), so that meant that even though they were libraries, I couldn't even call them from a commercial product. If they had been in a BSD style license, I could have used them. So I ended up spending some time implementing the ones I needed.
Many people do not seem to realize that when software is protected by the GPL, it is not only 'open source' but it is also prohibiting anyone from using it if they do not also put their software under the GPL. (There are some workarounds - you can always have the GPL code run in a separate process and use IPC/RPC to get results from it and technically not break the GPL, but that can get ugly quick.)
It's fine for someone to make the decision that they want to force people who use their code to use the GPL. BUT - if it is code that was developed with a government grant, to me it seems wrong to use a license that forces a specific use of the code and promotes what is basically a political agenda (force everything to be GPL), instead of using a BSD style license which makes the code truly open. Things paid for by the government should be used to go back to the community at large if at all possible, and the GPL limits the utility of the research performed under government grants.
What you fail to realize (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I agree - they should use BSD-style (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that government funded code should be more widely available than GPL - I have no inherant problem with companies using it to make their own stuff better. After all, they pay taxes too. But the original code must remain free, and allow free derivative works. That's the key point.
Don't need to outlaw GPL, just require the BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
If someone gets a grant to change the Linux kernel, they can license their changes under both the BSD and the GPL. If a private company gets a grant to write a diet analysis program, they can license it under the BSD, and also integrate the code into their own product.
This is the right thing to do anyway. All government funded development should be made available to the public without restriction.
GPL doesn't restrict the idea in the code.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Say, for instance, I want to use the GNU readline library (it's the library that gives the text-interface to a lot of programs the same feel. bash, mysql text interface, and others.. ). It's GPL, not LGPL. But I don't want my program to be GPL'd. What do I do? I rewrite the functionality. There's absolutely no problem with doing this.
By GPLing the code from government sponsored works, it only means you can't copy/paste the code into your non-GPL program. It doesn't mean you can't take the idea behind the code (and even look in the code to get the idea) and then recode the idea.
Basically, anyone complaining about code like this released under the GPL is just lazy and looking to make a quick buck.. do we know any companies like this?
This is BS (Score:3, Insightful)
This is simple, stupid alarmism brought about by a bored AC.
Offfering the dissenting opinion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Our company recently did a website for an organization which was organizing a web broadcast for a governmental organization. So, although we were technically being paid by the organization, we were indirectly being paid by the governmental organization.
But let's remove those distinctions and say the governmental organization themselves had hired us to create the website for them.
Well, our site used software which we had developed in house, at our own expense, prior to being hired. Some of it, however, was developed and coded while hired by them.
Technically, none of the modifcations we made to the software could have worked without the software we had written before.
The question is: if we were required to license this software as Open Source or GPL, would we have had to license *all* of it, including the code that was written prior to the bid?
Also, say that we had had to write the code from scratch. We might have charged less for our work than we could have, thinking, "We can reuse this code and sell it to customers later on."
I think that except in cases where the government is actually purchasing the software outright froma developer, it gets very sticky to say what should and shouldn't be freely developed.
While I agree that there are many cases in which making software open source is a good thing, the truth is if we were required by law to have, say, a section on our website that said, "By the way, here's all the code we've ever written, available for your own use. For free." it is unlikely that we would be able to continue to function as a profitable business. After all, what customer is going to pay for software that is being advertised or described as "free"?
Our tax dollars go to all sorts of projects. For instance, medicines are often developed through the help of government grants. Ever tried to get prescription drugs for free?
Last I checked. . . (Score:3, Funny)
Let's write to them and show them that we didn't elect these guys to screw us over.
Y'know, it's notsomuch that. We know these guys are going to screw us over. . . nowadays, I just vote for the candidate that promises lubrication.
Just Another Biased Partisan Rant (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a reality that many commercial vendors won't touch GPL code. If you're primary goal is to eliminate commercial software, this kind of gambit makes sense. If you want to avoid closing avenues for widespread distribution of software, it doesn't make sense.
Sounds like they do *GET* the GPL... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) They use the Internet, by virtue of TCP/IP, as "proof" of their thesis.
Very insightful. If the TCP/IP libraries and utilities from the BSD distribution had been GPL'ed, the technology would never have been integrated into so widely a diverse population of operating systems and utilities. That is, you would not today see Macintosh, Windows, Netware, Solaris and many other systems supporting it. These companies would have had to come up with something different, and more than likely not one of them would interoperate with the other. So we'd still be back in the world of AOL, Prodigy, MSN and Compuserve.
2) They state that you cannot improve OR adopt OR commercialize GPL software.
Do they really? My guess is they said you cannot improve or adopt it for commercialization. Which is true, and is one of the fundamental points of GNU.
3) They state that you cannot integrate GPL'd software with proprietery software.
This is true as well.
4) They say you should keep publicly funded code away from the public sector, so that proprietary interests can make money from the work.
This is pretty much in tune with the Technology Transition legislation passed back in 1980 promoting collaborative work between commercial and research entities. Bayh-Dole and Stevenson-Wydler acts.
Sounds to me like these representatives do understand the GPL and are willing to discuss it in an intelligent manner. I find it curious that the only way the GPL defenders can push their agenda is by distorting the purposes of the GPL. Sounds intellectually dishonest to me.
Re:Sounds like they do *GET* the GPL... (Score:3, Interesting)
"False. TCP/IP won on technical reasons not because of the BSD license."
Why do you think this is an either/or proposition? TCP/IP won over something like say NetBEUI or IPX/SPX for technical reasons, but it was widely adopted largely due to licensing arrangements. That made it a win-win scenario, which we all like to see.
"Again false. Commercialization != proprietary."
I never used the term proprietary. The fact is the GPL does prevent companies from making money from selling software. That goes above and beyond the notion of open and proprietary. As has been pointed out before TCP/IP is an open standard, and there are open source implementations of it, and it has been widely commercialized.
I cannot think of a single instance where a GPL'ed piece of software has had nearly the wide adoption of software licensed under BSD. Apache, sendmail, bind, etc. all use BSD style licenses.
"This amounts to a federal subsidy for commercial interests."
You haven't read the Bayh-Dole act, have you? It grants Federal research institutions the rights to license and patent the work they do. One of the other ongoing goals in this realm is to help make research institutions somewhat self-funding through licensing fees.
So it's not a federal subsidy for commercial interests at all.
"If my tax dollars are used in a project by a company that pays no taxes (yet wants rights like a normal citizen) then I demand my fair share of the work."
Which is why I recommend the BSD license at a minimum. Using said license you have just as much access to the software as does the corporations who might wish to utilize it. Using the GPL, the software is only good for end-users, not developers... thus this limits the availability of the technology in the marketplace.
"Sounds to me like you do not understand the GPL and probably are watching it rain outside your office window on One Microsoft Way."
Sounds to me like you've been sniffing to much glue.
Did you actually read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article says there is
This is pretty different than "Congress Members Oppose GPL for Govt. Research.' It's much narrower, and the total number of congress members involved is 2. That's 2, as in 2 out of 635. And it's to be applied to the security software only. The headline is much too broad, and therefore misleading. And it's a suggestion that licences be banned only if they "prevent or discourage commercial adoption" of the technologies. Given the way most corporations have shied away from GNU licences, I think you can easily make the case that in practice the GPL discourages commercial applications.There is one primary exception to that - standalone programs or systems. Note, for example, that Linux and GNU emacs are wildly popular, but the various FSF C function libraries were not. The GNU library licence was written because people were shying away from developing with GCC because FSF libc.a was required for gcc usage (I don't think that's true any more). Libc.a was under GPL and that meant applications that were developed with gcc would come under GPL. FSF created the library licence in an attempt to address the issue, but lately they seem to think that it was a mistake. IMHO, they're confusing cause with effect. Those libraries came into wider usage because the GPL didn't apply to software developed that used them, not because they were good libraries (though they are good libraries). But IMHO if they weren't under the library licence, they would not have come into as common a use as you now see.
Let us also note that releasing the code to the public domain does not prevent applying the GPL to it by others! You can grab a copy, hack it up to your hearts content, slap the GPL on it, and go. If your mods make it superior to the unrestricted original and the public thinks the GPL restrictions aren't a problem, cool. If not, well, the market has spoken. IMHO, this proposal will simply prevent the GPL from being applied before the market has spoken.
Feh, enough of that, I'm ranting.
gov. sponsered software should be public domain (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's two examples...
1. A goverment contractor builds an encryption system that'll be used to encrypt communications between locations, that should be designed top secret.
2. If DARPA gives a grant to a university to create a better piece of weather modeling software, it should be public domain. Now, if a company goes and takes that software and builds upon it and sells it, fine.
However, I as a citizen of the united states should be able to obtain a copy of the source code, since ultimately, my tax money went to fund the creation of that software.
What it sounds like is that the congress wants to possibly put some regime in place were tax payers money goes to find a project and then that project gets handed off to the highest bidder/(company who gave the most ammount of money to their campaign coffers...)
Back to the same old argument: (Score:3, Interesting)
The sole purpose of GPL is to turn copyright against itself with the goal of defeating proprietary software. If all software in the world was forced to being GPL, it would be identical to all software being public domain. So, in a sense, the GPL aims diminish or remove the institution of copyright with respect to computer software.
So it's a simple question: Do we want proprietary software or not? If you believe there should be proprietary software in this world, then government funded software should be BSD or public domain. (depending on if the authors want credit.) If you believe proprietary software is unnecessary and damaging to society, government funded software should be GPL until the government agrees to stop recognizing software copyrights.
For my own interests, I would prefer GPL, which is the core of what my business is based upon. I provide complete Open Source consulting services. All software I write is covered by GPL so that my proprietary-minded competitors cannot benefit from my work, while other community-focused businesses can.
GPL is NOT Appropriate (Score:3, Interesting)
A long time software writer/consultant to the US Government I can assure you that the GPL has already caused me great grief while trying to write software.
Specifically, I'm writing an open-source simulation model which I'd love to make GPL. But, I can't. Why?
Because the minute I make my open-source model GPL those dirty rotton competitors of mine are going to take the code, go straight to the guys I deal with in the government and get that next big contract to "upgrade" the software.
I'm the one inovating here, but I'm a small fish in a big pond. My competitor is a VERY large aircraft manufacturer, guess who.
Do I stand a chance against those guys if I cannot specifically control the code. No!
Keep in mind I have a lot of algorithms that I've created on my own. And sure the government has paid for XYZ project, but they got a good deal because I was able to provide them binaries of my code.
Otherwise, they would have had to pay 10 times the amount they paid me for project XYZ from somebody, see above, that doesn't already have the algorithms.
So, think about it really hard before you write that letter to that congressperson. In a LARGE percentage of cases, when the government contracts for a piece of software they are getting 10 percent new code and 90 percent code that's been invented utilizing somebodies hard earned time.
Clarification, Anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a non-USian (Score:3, Interesting)
GPL is wrong license for government applications (Score:3, Insightful)
I do remember one thing Bill Gates (who I'm not a fan of) said last year, the GPL is a virus. I'm not insinuating that its a bad virus, but nonetheless everything it touches gets changed, and its main purpose is to spread itself around. To me, that sounds like a virus.
The GPL is new. Open source is new. How can we possibly enlist such a license that is as restrictive as it is, that has very little legal experience, and makes all derivatives GPL. I think thats wrong.
The major gist of the GPL is that if you want to use this code, you must make your derivives GPL too. In a government atmoshphere, this is going to do nothing but create unusable code. The government needs a level of secrecy. If the GPL were to be used, you can rule out half of the potential applications off the bat.
The government is here to serve us, and do it as cheaply as possible. If they hire someone to make GPL code, and then later have to re-write the entire thing for use in another application because it cant be open-source (for security, secrecy, whatever reasons) thats costing us money.
The GPL has certain applications, government use is not one of them. If government created code starts getting licensed as GPL, then someone isnt doing their job.
Would this prevent modifications? (Score:3, Insightful)
GPL allows the user to make modifications. That's why most people use it, including governments.
Now, if there would be laws prohibiting government workers to writing GPL licensed software, they could not make the modifications, which is the biggest reason why anyone would use GPL software in the first place.
Therefore, by prohibiting writing GPL code, the government would, to some degree, exclude itself from using (and I mean really using) GPL licensed code. Everyone would suffer, except maybe Bad Bill.
Then, you say, government should only use PD or BSD licensed software, right? Not really, it wouldn't work in practice because any sensible subcontractor or other company developing the government-funded software further would certainly re-license it under a proprietary license. The company might even offer the modified version a bit cheaper if they get the copyrights and can re-sell it with big bucks to others. However, by purchasing that new software, which it probably would do since it's "cheaper", the government would lose the freedom to itself modify the code that it wanted to be free in the first place.
Such situations could, of course, be prevented by appropriate contracts with the subcontractors, but I would say it's quite certain that, in practice, such important factors would most certainly be ignored when writing the contracts, just as they are always when buying software from companies. This would probably cause an inevitable privatization of all software originally developed by the government and lead us to a world with only closed-source proprietary software.
One good way to correct the problem would be to make it a law to use only PD or BSD licensed software in goverment, but this would probably make some proprietary software companies even less happy than with GPL.
Hence, it may be best to allow the government agencies publish their software under any Open Source license they choose to be best for their purposes, including the PD non-license, BSD, and GPL.
Not that I'm a US citizen, but this might apply to other governments as well and, after all, the future of GPL licensed Free Software does affect the entire world. It's not just the US government developing software for itself, but many governments in the world do participate in common GPL licensed projects.
My letter to Congressman Kind (WI) (Score:3, Informative)
I recently found out that you sent out a statement opposing the use of GNU-style licenses such as the GPL for Federal software R&D. Your letter indicates to me that you may not be aware of certain aspects of such licenses.
As a WI taxpayer, I wanted to voice my concern to you, that tax-funded software development may be licensed under restrictive proprietary licenses by commercial entities, with the intent to sell products to US taxpayers. This seems wrong to me, as the software development is funded by public means, so it seems that any intellectual property funded by the public should remain property of the public, forever.
Licenses such as the GNU GPL license ensure exactly this. The GPL license would prevent a company from line-for-line replicating federally funded R&D software and repackaging it as *their own* product. This scenario would remove publicly funded intellectual property from the public. Commercial entities are in no way prevented from looking at federal R&D efforts and re-implementing the research for their own commercial products. They are also not prevented from taking a GPL'd product and selling it, at a profit that they determine, to the public. These are all allowed under GPL licensing terms. This latitude is obviously not something that opponents to GPL software, such as Microsoft, want congressmen to know about, of course, but nevertheless, the latitude exists.
The only stipulation the GPL makes is that if a company distributes, in any way shape or form, a product that uses GPL code internally, they must provide the source code to the product using the GPL'd code to anyone requesting it. Within the software engineering field, there are many, many ways to use and interact with code that would allow a product to use GPL'd code without being subject to the GPL's license terms. The main thing the GPL prevents is the outright copying of code and repackaging of that code as one's own. This, in my opinion, is absolutely correct for publicly funded software projects.
You cite TCP/IP as an example against GPL licensing. However, TCP/IP is a protocol definition, not a software project. Most of the operating systems and software that use TCP/IP these days use software that is written under a variety of open and proprietary licenses, with the original code maintaining little or no resemblance to the initial *reference* implementation of TCP/IP. This initial *reference* implementation is the only item covered by the BSD-style license that is credited with allowing TCP/IP to flourish. However, the research papers that explain TCP/IP and allow a software developer to reimplement a 100% compliant TCP/IP system are not restricted in any way. Commercial entities can and have used these papers to create highly optimized TCP/IP systems (see the high-availability servers by IBM, Sun, Microsoft et al.) Had the initial *unoptimized* reference implementation not been licensed under a BSD-style copyright, this would STILL be possible. Had the initial reference implementation been licensed under the GPL, there would be little or no difference to the landscape of the Internet today. If anything, the Internet would have arrived sooner. Commercial entities would certainly not have made any less money.
Let me reiterate one important point: having R&D licensed under the GPL does not in any way shape or form prevent commercial entities from using the research to sell products. This is if they reimplement the results of the research OR if they choose to use the GPL'd code directly. If they choose to use the GPL'd code directly, they must simply honor the request to access the source code of the product using the GPL'd source to anyone requesting it. This does not in any way prevent a company from selling a product, for profit, based on GPL'd code. It is being done today, successfully, by many software development businesses.
By and large, for the vast majority of citizens in the US, having access to the source of a product is worthless. Allowing other developers, to whom the source might have value, to view the source of a product based on GPL'd code will only promote innovation in the high-technology industry.
I urge you to use the Internet and other resources at your disposal to learn more about the possibilities and the *true* limitations of licenses such as the GPL. Please, do not support the use of proprietary licenses, such as those used by Microsoft, to limit the public's access to federally funded R&D and software that is based on publicly funded research and development.
Most respectfully,
Brice D. Ruth
I'm a software contractor for the government, (Score:4, Insightful)
In particular, this sentence
unfairly singles out the GPL and ignores all of the other restrictive licenses- such as anything of the form Copyright 2002 XYZZY Corporation!!
These Congressmen+lobbyists are deliberately mistating the position of the "Open Source Government" initiative (or cherry-picking some more extremist proponents to serve as strawmen).
And they're leaving out an important intellectual-property fact about the standard procedures of software contracting: when you contract for code, unless you explicitly specify something different, both the customer AND the contractor get rights to the code. If the contract was for a compiler program, then the customer gets rights to some binaries, and the contractor still keeps code rights. (This many "consultancy" houses work- they resell the same source code over and over, with small customer-specific modifications each time)
What the public should desire is for us to get some benefit from software development paid for by the government. Today, a federal agency will fund a project, get it installed & maybe working, and then forget about it. The contractor typically searches around for other agencies needing the same functionalities and sells it to them, again. (Taking advantage of the government's poor inventory management to rack up more sales- but that's the customer's fault for not being more organized).
The change I'd like to see is, when the government enters into new software contracts, they ask for a GPL (or at least PD) source code package amoung the deliverables. That way all of the researchers and developers in the government, academia, and the private sector can examine and build on the taxpayer funded work. This doesn't have to be a law, just an executive directive, or mere recommendation. Not only will it encourage "the progress of science and the useful arts", but it will increase bueraucratic transparency and reduce dangerous security flaws.
This says NOTHING about taking away the separate right that every contractor has to reuse their own code. The developing company can maintain their own copyrighted version to use as they wish. But that shouldn't be the ONLY copy of the source code- we paid for it, we'd like to look it over too.
Then the issue is classification. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the code ought to be classified. Pure and simple.
However, if it's some government-funded weather research initiative, or something about safety, then it by all means ought to be GPLed. Hey, we're paying for the development. But let issues of defence and national security be classified and restrict who works on and who gets to see the source code. Placing code under the GPL has nothing to do with the Chinese.
Re:Then the issue is classification. (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, leave it as it is today.
I'm curious though. If they didn't license the software under GPL (or any other OpenSource License [opensource.org]), what would they use?
It's completely determined by the terms of the contract between the government and the third party developing the software. A lot of the software the government has developed for them has no copyright at all, and is basically public domain. Sometimes the government doesn't even receive the source code for projects they fund, and sometimes a particular license is chosen. In the case of the TCP/IP stack that's cited in the letters posted in the article, the BSD license was chosen by Berkeley, not by the government/DARPA, and the license was not a term of the contract/funding.
Re:Then the issue is classification. (Score:3, Informative)
Under public domain, I can do whatever I want to it.
Embedded systems (Score:5, Informative)
how the hell is "Anyone can download and use this software" antithetical to the public domain
Answer: Apparently, the GNU General Public License can in some cases restrict an integrator from bundling GPL software with proprietary software, especially on an embedded system.
The GPL FAQ [gnu.org] seems to define "combining modules into one program" as running the modules in a shared memory space. See mere aggregation defined [gnu.org] and GPL plugins [gnu.org] in the GPL FAQ. Even though the GPL FAQ is not normative, it still colors the interpretation of the GPL according to the rules of the common law.
Thus, it's legally shaky to use a piece of software under the GNU GPL in an embedded system, whose software is usually distributed as a single binary that runs in a single memory space. Though the GPL's "mere aggregation" clause clarifies that licensees may distribute a copy of both GPL software on the same medium as proprietary software, embedded systems may not separate the programs enough to qualify as "mere aggregation" rather than "combining".
Not flamebait, he's right! (Score:3, Interesting)
And trust me, we're having enough bad PR with these cards as it is...
Re:Not flamebait, he's right! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Any license, as long as its FREE. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Any license, as long as its FREE. (Score:5, Informative)
First, Adam Smith isn't the representative for the district where Corporate HQ lies -- that's Jay Inslee. That said, a great many MS employees do live in Rep. Smith's district, and a number of them do contribute to his campaign.
So what? Well, OpenSecrets associates all contributions from individuals with the employer of the primary wage earner for the individual or its family. That means that if I make a contribution to Jay Inslee (my representative, since I'm from Redmond), it's treated as a contribution from Microsoft. Ignoring the fact that if I wanted to make a donation as a Microsoft employee, I'd donate to MSPAC, not to Jay directly, OpenSecrets treats that as a corporate bribe.
Re:Those damn republicans... (Score:4, Funny)
Moron. Outlawing the GPF would get rid of Windows.