A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

[Posted March 10, 2016 by n8willis]

The White House has announced a draft policy addressing how the U.S. federal government will share and release custom software. "This policy requires that, among other things: (1) new custom code whose development is paid for by the Federal Government be made available for reuse across Federal agencies; and (2) a portion of that new custom code be released to the public as Open Source Software (OSS)."

The full policy document is available at sourcecode.cio.gov, where it has been made available for public comment. The relevant passage regarding public source releases begins by outlining a pilot program. "Each covered agency shall release at least 20 percent of its newly-developed custom code each year as OSS. Custom code is defined as code for all custom software projects, modules, and add-ons that are self-contained. [...] Although the minimum requirement for OSS release is 20 percent of custom code, covered agencies are strongly encouraged to publish as much custom-developed code as possible to further the Federal Government’s commitment to transparency, participation, and collaboration."

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 1:08 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (20 responses)

As delighted I am to see the current administration take such a stance on OSS, I'm convinced this policy will ultimately fail. In reference to another US Government IT standardization effort, who all still programs in Ada?

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 1:15 UTC (Fri) by faramir (subscriber, #2327) [Link] (9 responses)

I don't see this as an attempt to standardize anything. It is simply making the code available for other people to use if it happens to be beneficial to do so. Worse case scenario would seem to be that people will ignore the code made available to them and go off and right more custom code. Which would pretty much make it just like the way things have been done in the past.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 5:13 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (7 responses)

All government code for non-defense should be OSS, no license required public domain. Anytime the government funds are used the result should be required to be public domain.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 6:05 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (3 responses)

That is the case already, but only within the USA. Outside the USA the American government reserves the right to assert copyright.

http://quantenblog.net/free-software/us-copyright-interna...
https://www.usa.gov/government-works
http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#317

Some recent discussion of this on debian-legal:

https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/20160111203459.GA49...

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 18:05 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

> That is the case already, but only within the USA. Outside the USA the American government reserves the right to assert copyright.

The US government can also hold copyright on work done by contractors; only work done directly by the government falls into the public domain.

Not true

Posted Mar 11, 2016 18:12 UTC (Fri) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (1 responses)

Not true. It's true that software developed solely by US federal government employees as part of their official duties doesn't have copyright in the US (with a few exceptions for NIST and the US Postal Service). However, the vast majority of software developed using US federal government employees is developed by contractors, which has completely different rules.

Not true

Posted Mar 14, 2016 13:49 UTC (Mon) by dpquigl (guest, #52852) [Link]

It depends on the sector but yes a lot of GOTS/Govt software is developed by contractors. Most federal contract boilerplate now contains copyright assignment to the government since they were bitten by that so many times in the past.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 7:11 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

All government code for non-defense should be OSS, no license required public domain.

I agree philosophically with this, but I can't see this ever happening in pragmatic terms. Saying that every last line of non-defense government code should be OSS is like saying that there should be a giant wall on the USA's borders (to keep out unwanted riffraff). Or at least that's how one current political candidate sees things.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm now going to flog myself for bringing up politics here on LWN.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 7:30 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (1 responses)

In addition to the (basically perfectly correct) responses made by others, it's worth noting that government code for defense can end up public domain. SQLite, which is in the public domain, was originally developed under contract to the US Navy! Initially intended for use with guided missile destroyers.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 13:11 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And both dBase and Pick were originally Public Domain projects that got turned into commercial projects. Pick definitely was DoD - it was written for use as a parts database for military helicopters.

Cheers,
Wol

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 13:16 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Which would pretty much make it just like the way things have been done in the past.

But it makes it easy for government contractors writing government code to use publicly available code (and save money? :-)

And what happens when the coding is contracted out and copyright transfer is not part of the deal?

Cheers,
Wol

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 6:23 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (5 responses)

who all still programs in Ada?

It is still used in avionics and space applications. In situations where failure is not an option...

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 11:37 UTC (Fri) by jeff@uclinux.org (guest, #8024) [Link]

Here is an interesting use of Ada.

https://github.com/tgingold/ghdl

GHDL is a VHDL front end. In Ada because VHDL borrows Ada syntax, and is for mission critical hardware models.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 14, 2016 17:34 UTC (Mon) by zmower (subscriber, #3005) [Link] (3 responses)

And railway systems, air traffic control, medical devices and defence. I still write Ada (professionally and hobby). My contribution to mal (make-a-lisp) is incoming.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 14, 2016 23:02 UTC (Mon) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link] (2 responses)

Have any Ada folks looked seriously at Rust? Does it hold promise to be an Ada replacement?

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 14, 2016 23:09 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

It's much better than Ada at actual typechecks and verification.

Ada is somewhat fetishized in this regard, but in reality it's not really better than other languages.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 18, 2016 7:59 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link]

Compared to C, it has actual type declarations, not just typedefs. Enums are actually enums, not integers. There are numeric subtypes of detail I've not seen in any other language. It may be a Pascal descendant, and not a functional programming language with fancy typing, but it's a lot better than its statically compiled competitors, with the possible exception of Rust and several other new and infrequently used languages.

The most recent version, Ada 2012, has container libraries where the size is statically set so the amount of memory the program uses can be rigorously controlled without giving up the use of a powerful container library. That too, as far as I know, is unique to Ada, probably because worrying about memory is a bit of niche market.

As far as I know, SPARK, an Ada subset, is the only statically compiled formally proven language available as open source. There's also Coq and friends, but the market for a statically verified Haskell dialect is a bit different from the market for an Ada subset with the power of Modula-2.

There are statically verified C subsets, but not open source, as far as I know.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 16:14 UTC (Fri) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link]

>> who all still programs in Ada?
When you look at the Ada language itself, regardless its DoD link in the past, it is a nice language.

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 21:56 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link] (1 responses)

> who all still programs in Ada?

Anyone who uses Oracle and programs in PL/SQL?

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 15, 2016 15:36 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That's not Ada. That's Ada with all the actual interesting parts and power removed and a pile of horrific crocks crudely bolted onto the top of it. (I know, I programmed in PL/SQL for many, many years, and always wanted a real language instead.)

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 21, 2016 13:52 UTC (Mon) by SEJeff (guest, #51588) [Link]

About 7 years ago, I dated a girl who was a Software Engineer at Boeing. She had a Masters in CS with a specialty of OpenGL. She worked on the 3D overlay on the B1 Lancer bomber plane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_B-1_Lancer) and it was done through this kludgy ADA/OpenGL bridge. Yeah, it is old, but ADA is very much alive and well. Developers under 35 are getting paid to write it even if it doesn't run the latest web startups.

Metrics (was A policy statement on open-source software from the White House)

Posted Mar 11, 2016 13:52 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

How do you measure "20 percent" of the code? I mean, could they just release all the comments?

Metrics (was A policy statement on open-source software from the White House)

Posted Mar 11, 2016 18:15 UTC (Fri) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link] (2 responses)

If you don't agree, well, comment!! I don't think "20%" is a good idea. I don't know how to measure that, and more importantly, it's totally arbitrary anyway. But the way to get a change considered is to submit issues and pull requests (or chime in on one).

Metrics (was A policy statement on open-source software from the White House)

Posted Mar 12, 2016 14:27 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not a US citizen or resident, so I doubt I'm eligible to comment.

Non-US citizens can comment, as far as I know

Posted Mar 13, 2016 23:04 UTC (Sun) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link]

Non-US citizens can comments, as far as I know. You're helping them. Obviously if you recommend a particular policy you won't have much weight, but if you provide information they didn't have otherwise, notice an inconsistency, or anything else, it can help. Also, if you note something, US citizens may say "me too".

A policy statement on open-source software from the White House

Posted Mar 11, 2016 15:14 UTC (Fri) by lamawithonel (subscriber, #86149) [Link]

Oh wow! They're taking comment via the GitHub issue system and change suggestions via pull requests.

Does anyone really care?

Posted Mar 14, 2016 3:08 UTC (Mon) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

Yet another dump of shrugware. Do they actually think citizens are going to help debug their code? Maybe a decade ago someone opening up their code on the web might have been a novelty....now, meh