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.
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...
Re:Any license, as long as its FREE. (Score:4, Informative)
LawMeme Rips Apart the Note and Letter (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Exactly (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Exactly (Score:1, Informative)
I think that's not accurate. All the government contracts I've worked on specifically renounce any government claim to copyright/IP, but also require that Federal projects be allowed unrestricted use of any contract results.
Note that if your contract is 'to provide a bunch of tabulated data' and you write a database to perform that contract, your database does not necessarily have to be provided, so it is possible that, having fulfilled your 'provide data' contract, you take a second contract 'to write a database program' that you've already written.
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.
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: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:Donations (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It is no wonder he is a aol user! (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
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.
This is Microsoft's greatest weapon... (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:Public Domain (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, but it's only one-way compatibility. The GPL states that you must release derivative works under the GPL as well, right? So, as soon as the tiniest change is made, you can't re-release a GPLed work to the Public Domain, unless you redo all the effort starting from the PD version.
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".
(For my compatriots...) (Score:4, Informative)
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: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.
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
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Informative)
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:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Informative)
Nope...companies are a set of assets owned by the collective shareholders. That includes the services of the people working there, the fixed / var assets, their IP, the brand. The thing is the companies goal is to maximize revenue, all other goals are second class goals.
There's NO unowned company that I know of. If it's not, it's something else.
Re:Public Domain (Score:2, Informative)
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? And I quote (from your link! [gnu.org]):
We classify a license according to certain key questions:
Whether it is compatible with the GNU GPL. (This means you can combine a module which was released under that license with a GPL-covered module to make one larger program.)
So, from the above we see that GPL compatible licenses are licenses for code which permit you to modify that code and redistribute it under the GPL, not licenses that are "equivalent" to the GPL.
You can do whatever the hell you want with public domain code, as it's under even fewer restrictions than code under the BSD license. This obviously includes redistributing it under the GPL. But just as obviously, you can't take GPL'ed code and release it under the public domain.
The original poster is quite right in that promoting public-domain software would make RMS mad and Bill Gates happy.
Re:Contract code (Score:3, Informative)
And even if they are aware of owning code suitable for a task, the source code delivery is still probably too hard for them to figure out how to use. "Will it still compile? Is it y2k compliant? Does it boot on a Pentium4?" Without the competency to answer those questions on their own, they're forced to return to the original vendor with the checkbook open.
However, if the code wasn't only locked in a Pentagon vault, but also up on http://www.dod.gov/downloads, then maybe some other members of industry would gain some experience with the code. Then, the next time the government needs a tiny modification, reconfiguration, or simple reinstallation of a software product, they'll be a little be of competition for who gets the job!
Re:GPL is WRONG for government (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Any license, as long as its FREE. (Score:1, Informative)
For polisci geeks, this practice was begun by the feminist PAC EMILY's List -- EMILY standing for Early Money Is Like Yeast (it rises).