Code written by Govt. employees is 'Public Domain', meaning specifically exempted from copyright.
However, most? government software is written by contractors, and not published or shared. I don't know for sure, but I imagine that a large amount of that work is under a proprietary license. I think it's a giant step in the right direction to get the Govt. to publish, and reuse (our) software because we are paying for it once already. However, I think that the primary beneficiaries will be the software ISVs and VARs that will essentially have another 'github' of govt. software to grab and bring in-house. The same problem is reflected at GitHub where the majority of new projects are selecting non-free licenses now whereas a few years ago GPL was the most popular license in the world. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html See license list at https://github.com/new See global license popularity at https://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses (their data may be skewed or unreliable) Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._government Greg Rundlett https://eQuality-Tech.com https://freephile.org On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 4:24 PM, Mark Komarinski <mkomarin...@wayga.org> wrote: > I was under the impression that code written by the government was public > domain. You and I (and private companies) paid the taxes that generated > that code, so releasing it in anything less than a public domain is doing a > disservice. > > Back when I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs there were > companies that took the VA code, modified it for non-VA hospitals, and > offered to provide the software and support for a fee. I didn't find a > problem with it then, nor do I now. That's what public domain means. > > -Mark > > -------- Original message -------- > From: "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <g...@freephile.com> > Date: 3/25/16 3:33 PM (GMT-05:00) > To: blu <disc...@blu.org>, GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org> > Subject: Govt Source Code Policy > > The US Fed. Govt. is proposing a pilot program to release at least 20% of > newly developed custom code as 'OSS'. https://sourcecode.cio.gov/ > They're accepting comments now. And since it's hosted on GitHub, you > "comment" via the issue queue, and you can also fork the project and issue > a pull request. > > I forked it and created a pull request. > https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/pulls proposing to use > the term 'Free Software' in place of 'Open Source' > > If the government actually goes through with 'open sourcing' their work, > it's actually a giant corporate handout because companies will have greater > access to publicly funded works that they can then incorporate into > proprietary works. > > What do you think? > > > Greg Rundlett > https://eQuality-Tech.com > https://freephile.org >
_______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/