Should our government be doing this?

[pcstru]

I'd like to pick apart slightly the different meanings of 'Open' and how the forum sees the capabilities and needs of governments within that context. From memory, "open" has meant many things during my professional career;

 

 

5) Latterly Open has come to mean software source code distributed with an open copyright where the originator no longer enforces their right to limit the copying of the source code.

Strictly speaking they do avail themselves of their rights to copyright by mandating conditions under which the code can be re-distributed - even if those conditions allow you to make use of the code in any way you see fit. And to do that in perpetuity, they need to retain the rights in order to continue to ... 'give' them away!

 

I think the original post revolved around two meanings of 'open' in relation to IT endeavours and government involvement.

 

1. Open standards - being largely interoperability issues of one form or another, essentially allowing decoupling of systems at specified boundaries - such as electrical connectivity between devices or specific file formats allowing connectivity between systems or between publishers/information providers and information consumers. Open standards should be championed by governments. They allow for properly competitive and efficient markets.

 

2. Open Source - being 'free' and properly quantified by the Free Software Foundation "Free as in free speech, not free beer". I don't see this as something that compels any government to mandate the actual production of software - as you rightly point out the 'state' (as such) has no expertise in such areas as software production. But they could state a preference - where two products are equally suitable for doing a job and perhaps competing on equal TCO basis, should they then be able to discriminate on the basis of the availability of the source code - that the code is 'open'? I think in general they should and in some cases, where governments are purchasing software from suppliers that they should only do so if code can be inspected and held in escrow (think nuclear power station control systems or military communication systems).

 

I don't see any of that interfering with competition or mandating that people have to give things away. The BBC commissions and purchases from independent producers despite being in the production game themselves. The arbiter is quality not some notion of communism or the frequently mistaken notion with free software - of something for nothing.

[PhillipHamlyn]

pcstru,

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

In the realm of open standards, I think a government has a responsibility to mandate standards for communiction with and within the government, in order to make it efficient, but I don't understand why you think they have a duty to champion open standards elsewhere. For example (glib; I realise) I think the government was quite right not to champion either of the open standards Betamax or VHS; its not their duty or expertise to do so. Similarly, I see the government having an absolute right to specify DDA AAA open standards compliance for publicly funded web sites, but probably don't have a right to specify how a games console user interface should operate, and indeed they don't do so.

 

In terms of my example of the BBC, I was trying to draw a parallel with other areas of government provision of electronic services. Certainly they mandate the data interchange format (i.e. the radio spectrum and the format of the signal encoding) but they don't seem to perceive they have a role in mandating the terms under which the content is licensed from authors producers despite all of it being paid from the public purse. I believe you are agreeing with me here, that the government have no role in intervening in the licensing/royalty model used by authors/artists to produce their product - the key arbitrator is quality, not terms of sale ?

 

Phillip

[pcstru]

pcstru,

 

In the realm of open standards, I think a government has a responsibility to mandate standards for communiction with and within the government, in order to make it efficient, but I don't understand why you think they have a duty to champion open standards elsewhere. For example (glib; I realise) I think the government was quite right not to champion either of the open standards Betamax or VHS; its not their duty or expertise to do so.

Certainly not one over the other per se, but what about when governments are buying equipment and that equipment needs to be interoperable? Imagine turning up at a time critical military briefing armed with a VHS cassette detailing enemy troop movements when everything on the base was Betamax? That would just be ... embarrassing at best.

Similarly, I see the government having an absolute right to specify DDA AAA open standards compliance for publicly funded web sites, but probably don't have a right to specify how a games console user interface should operate, and indeed they don't do so.

Yet the line for DDA isn't drawn at 'publicly funded'. I think that is conflating two issues - the government isn't really the one with rights as such, in that case the government is legislating to protect people's rights, access to things considered as rather 'basic' rights - employment, education, transport, land and property. You could look at that another way though, surely if the businesses and corporations played fair to everyone, then there would be no need of such legislation. The simple truth though, is that corporations don't play fair and don't want to play fair. Openness and transparency are poison to most corporate entities. They want the majority of the market where the money is without having to cater to the minority who will only reduce their margins. They don't just want the sale based on the merits of their product, they want to maximise the lock-in that product gives them and milk the revenue stream for everything it is worth.

 

In terms of my example of the BBC, I was trying to draw a parallel with other areas of government provision of electronic services. Certainly they mandate the data interchange format (i.e. the radio spectrum and the format of the signal encoding) but they don't seem to perceive they have a role in mandating the terms under which the content is licensed from authors producers despite all of it being paid from the public purse. I believe you are agreeing with me here, that the government have no role in intervening in the licensing/royalty model used by authors/artists to produce their product - the key arbitrator is quality, not terms of sale ?

 

I certainly agree that they do not need to intervene at the level you are suggesting. I think you are mistaken in one of your basic assumptions as I pointed out. Copyright in open source is not relinquished by the authors. Perhaps this is leading you to some ... err ... weird conclusions.

 

Adoption of open source by governments is not something that overturns the rights of the creators of works - nor should it. The question is whether open source in itself, all other things being equal, is a criteria that gives the state (or society if you prefer) something of 'value'. I would argue that it can, one obvious value being higher quality and better guarantee of assurance of quality, but there are other benefits too - such as reducing lock-in which increases the fairness of markets as all competitors are then on an equal footing to provide the downstream services.

[PhillipHamlyn]

pcstru,

 

Thanks for the further reply.

 

I agree that DDA was a poor example - it was intended to illustrate that, where a government is the specifier of a product they buy, they have the authority to specify how it works but not how it is produced (or at least they specify how it was produced, but generally they dont care).

 

I understand that the copyright in open source remains with the author of the work; I am attempting to draw out what part of 'Open' should fall within the remit of government. The statement from the Maltese government merely mentions 'best value for money', and 'interoperability', both of which I believe UK goverment has an active current role in. danbuntu (and I believe SYNACK and toledo's comments also concur with the spirit of them) commented that he would be happy for his taxes to be spent by a government on working with and building open source software, which I contend is not within the remit of government (and I think we agree on this, as does jamesfed from his comment).

 

Where I think the situation becomes contentious is where there is support that government generally should support the Free Software Foundation definition of 'Free' which would force upon the author a specific form of contract between them and the consumers of the software. Although the author retains the copy right, they confer the 'freedom' for any user of the software to distribute it in whole or part to anyone they see fit, and I'm not sure a government has a role in specifying that the author should provide such freedom to consumers; its seems a little 'totalitarian' in aspect.

 

Again, to avoid doubt, these are my own personal views and do not reflect the views of my employer.

 

Thanks for the debate !

 

Phillip

[pcstru]

I am attempting to draw out what part of 'Open' should fall within the remit of government. The statement from the Maltese government merely mentions 'best value for money', and 'interoperability', both of which I believe UK goverment has an active current role in. danbuntu (and I believe SYNACK and toledo's comments also concur with the spirit of them) commented that he would be happy for his taxes to be spent by a government on working with and building open source software, which I contend is not within the remit of government (and I think we agree on this, as does jamesfed from his comment).

I don't agree - but the situation is not black and white. There are some systems which the private sector will build and bring to market. Suppliers happily take on the risk and build (say) a Schools MIS, even a Local Authority scale MIS. But who would take the risk to build a national system, where by definition there is only one customer? That has to be in the remit of government. The choice then of open source or not seems relatively straightforward, the question should be "why should it NOT be open source"?

 

I'm not clear either your reasons why you say "I'm not sure any government department has a unique expertise in software construction; its not a function of state". If the government doesn't have unique expertise in building systems for government, then who does? Perhaps the problem is that there is very little experience anywhere of building large national systems because they are a relatively new thing and few have trod the path before. Perhaps the problem is compounded because we have not invested in gaining and retaining the expertise because when it comes to such projects, they are outsourced and the expertise (such as it is) evaporates after (or often during) the project.

 

Where I think the situation becomes contentious is where there is support that government generally should support the Free Software Foundation definition of 'Free' which would force upon the author a specific form of contract between them and the consumers of the software. Although the author retains the copy right, they confer the 'freedom' for any user of the software to distribute it in whole or part to anyone they see fit, and I'm not sure a government has a role in specifying that the author should provide such freedom to consumers; its seems a little 'totalitarian' in aspect.

 

I don't see how. If the government commissions someone to write a piece of software, then the government is the copyright owner (subject to the terms of the contract - but why should that not be a term?). It's not forcing someone, they have a choice of entering into the contract or not. The other circumstance is purchase/selection of pre-existing systems where there is competition between closed source and open source. Again this doesn't involve anyone forcing IP holders to give up their rights.

[PhillipHamlyn]

pcstru,

 

Agreed; it is difficult to build a product when there is only one likely customer - it is a bespoke solution (bespoke to that one customer) and I probably view it as consultancy rather than 'product' - but everyone will vary in their opinion of that. The crucial difference as to whether 'private sector' will build a product at risk might simply be the size of the potential market in this respect - if there is only one potential customer probably that customer should bear the risk of financing it.

 

With regard to expertise in government, my view is that the expertise of governments is in governing, not production. Its been a long time since government had a built roads, defence equipment or town halls on any scale. Same is true of IT systems as well. I don't see that as a particularly bad thing - the funding of a thing is seperate from the production of a thing, and its quite correct that the government has a unique capability to fund large scale works. However this does veer into the realms of politics and thats more of a belief than a technical matter, so I'm happy to drop this angle.

 

On your last comment, I agree that if the government or any other body actually commissions a piece of work they are at liberty to tell the supplier to build it out of pink cheese - its their cash, and as you point out, their product and IPR at the end of the day. What happens to this argument where the government is not comissioning the work ? They can certainly have a procurement policy on what COTS packages they might wish to purchase with tax payer money, but it seems to me that a policy enforcing Free software might just drive up the price of a piece of product rather than reduce it as expected. If supplier X invests £10k building a commercial product and wishes to sell it in the open market, and one half of the market insists it will only purchase if they can change and resell that software, or give it away, and the other half of the market is happy to purchase a closed-source system, the supplier might well conclude they are likely to make a thumping loss supplying to the Free sofware purchaser. This is a hypothetical scenario, but to look at it from another angle, if you as a software supplier needed to raise capital for your startup company to speculatively build a piece of software, and you were in the position of trying to convince a bank or Angel to fund this, what actual value do the investor get in return for their risk - it seems the IPR generated by the capital would just be distributed gratis to the open market. I can't quite see how the financing of this would work. If you have an example or a hypothetical scenario that rewards the investor for their capital, I'd be happy to get to understand it better.

 

Phillip.

[pcstru]

With regard to expertise in government, my view is that the expertise of governments is in governing, not production. Its been a long time since government had a built roads, defence equipment or town halls on any scale.

That's true, but they still provide healthcare, education and other services which are organisational/provision endeavours on a massive scale. At the end of the day, all these things come down to people. Having good people with the right skills isn't simply the preserve of private companies. Unfortunately as you say it (preference) comes down to a political 'belief'. I say unfortunately because without access to detailed information on costs it is impossible to make a rational decision based on actual evidence. That in itself comes down to a lack of openness and transparency.

 

My own view is that I see incompetence in both the private and public sectors and in terms of actual incompetence there is little to differentiate them. So I'm left asking do I want incompetence that is motivated by profit or incompetence that is motivated by public service? Which do you think will end up costing more?

 

On your last comment, I agree that if the government or any other body actually commissions a piece of work they are at liberty to tell the supplier to build it out of pink cheese - its their cash, and as you point out, their product and IPR at the end of the day. What happens to this argument where the government is not comissioning the work ? They can certainly have a procurement policy on what COTS packages they might wish to purchase with tax payer money, but it seems to me that a policy enforcing Free software might just drive up the price of a piece of product rather than reduce it as expected.

 

This seems to be largely predicated on "support of OS" being implemented as "it must be OS or we won't buy it". I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that as a model. The argument doesn't apply where OS is simply competing against closed packages even if part of the criteria naturally favours 'free' software or unnaturally favours it by mandating that bid evaluation criteria give marks for something merely being OS. In that case it is up to the suppliers of closed packages to bring to market higher quality/more desirable products. Not impossible and as a policy outcome, I would suggest it is highly desirable (well, unless of course you happen to have your hands wrapped round the teats of a cash cow).