Slashdot | CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source, Instead

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Paul D. Fernhout

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Aug 7, 2010, 5:01:39 PM8/7/10
to Open Manufacturing
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/08/07/1715259/CIA-Software-Developer-Goes-Open-Source-Instead
"""
jamie found this piece, at Wired's Danger Room from a couple of days back,
about an encouraging sign for the growth of open source in the military /
intelligence sphere. "For three years, Matthew Burton has been trying to get
a simple, useful software tool into the hands of analysts at the Central
Intelligence Agency. For three years, haggling over the code�s intellectual
property rights has kept the software from going anywhere near Langley. So
now, Burton�s releasing it � free to the public, and under an open source
license."
"""
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/cia-software-developer-goes-open-source-instead/

Many aspects of these sorts of systems can, in theory, relate to thinking
through social change issues or designing infrastructure for resilience.

For example:
"Structured Evidential Argumentation System"
http://www.ai.sri.com/~seas/
"The survival of an enterprise often rests upon its ability to make correct
and timely decisions, despite the complexity and uncertainty of the
environment. Because of the difficulty of employing formal methods in this
context, decision makers typically resort to informal methods, sacrificing
structure and rigor. We have developed a new methodology that retains the
ease-of-use, familiarity, and (some of) the free-form nature of informal
methods, while benefiting from the rigor, structure, and potential for
automation characteristic of formal methods. Our approach aims to foster
thoughtful and timely analysis through the introduction of structure, and
collaboration through access to the corporate memory of current and past
analytic results."

And:
http://www.ai.sri.com/~angler/
"Angler is a tool that helps intelligence/policy professionals Explore,
understand, and overcome cognitive biases, and Collaboratively expand their
joint cognitive vision Through use of divergent & convergent thinking
techniques (such as brainstorming and clustering)."

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

Greg

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Aug 8, 2010, 10:39:34 AM8/8/10
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com

>http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/cia-software-developer-goes-open-source-instead/
>Many aspects of these sorts of systems can, in theory, relate to thinking
>through social change issues or designing infrastructure for resilience.

>For example:
>"Structured Evidential Argumentation System"
>http://www.ai.sri.com/~seas/

From the SRI website:
"The version of the SEAS server software, largely developed under U.S. Government sponsorship, known simply as SEAS, is available for use by the U.S. Government free of fees or licenses. High SEAS, an enhanced version of the SEAS server software, developed through additional investment by SRI International, is available for fee and under license to the U.S. Government and others."

Is it really open source if only the US Govt has access?


Alex Rollin

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Aug 8, 2010, 10:54:19 AM8/8/10
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Sure! Because they can edit the source.

We have to read the details of licenses to find out who can do what.

I was just looking for a mediawiki extension, for the source. I
couldn't find it! It exists somewhere. I found sites using it. They
don't have to give me a copy of it though. I wish there was a license
that did that, too; made it so I could request a copy of the free/open
code-behind.

A

On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Greg <gdv...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Is it really open source if only the US Govt has access?
>
>

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Patrick Anderson

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Aug 8, 2010, 12:04:56 PM8/8/10
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Alex Rollin wrote:
> They don't have to give me a copy of it though.
> I wish there was a license that did that, too;
> made it so I could request a copy of the free/open
> code-behind.

The GNU AGPL does what you describe.

See: http://GNU.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

John Griessen

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Aug 8, 2010, 12:10:40 PM8/8/10
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Alex Rollin wrote:
> Sure! Because they can edit the source.
>

Sounds like the beginning of the GOSS (Govt Open Source Software) movement.

Will that help us citizens?

(Don't answer that. It would be off topic.)

JG

Bryan Bishop

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Aug 8, 2010, 12:12:52 PM8/8/10
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com, Bryan Bishop
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 11:10 AM, John Griessen wrote:
> Sounds like the beginning of the GOSS (Govt Open Source Software) movement.
>
> Will that help us citizens?
>
> (Don't answer that.  It would be off topic.)

Actually, there is an important point that I am sure the BSD brethren
would lke to bring up: the reason that some people dislike OSI-like
licenses is because the government can't touch them, can't use the
software, and can't contribute to the development. That's why BRLCAD
remains in the public domain. These issues are probably relevant in an
open manufacturing context, too.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

Paul D. Fernhout

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Aug 8, 2010, 12:37:19 PM8/8/10
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Sorry, I did not mean to imply that those SRI tools were "open source",
although SRI does probably do some open source. My point was that they were
good examples of what one could aspire to make as open source tools.

Those SRI tools are, in that sense, an example of why tax dollars should
only be spent on open source products. Now, after all that funding, someone
would have to go out and reinvent the wheel just to free it, rather than
build on those systems directly.

Still, most work in software in my experience is in figuring out what is
worth building. So, SRI, on the government dime, has done a lot of the heavy
lifting there.

While there is not so much debate on the OM list on economics recently (for
which I am sure many are thankful :-), such structured argument and
multi-perspective tools would have been useful a year or so ago in such
discussions, and certainly still might be very useful on the p2presearch
list when it hashed through some of that still.

Such tools could also be useful in thinking through how to make the case for
open manufacturing to a broader public.

Paul D. Fernhout

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Aug 8, 2010, 12:44:51 PM8/8/10
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Could you please clarify that with examples of objectionable licenses and
specific situations?

Is this a random counter-example?
http://www.koders.com/java/fidDBE97628B4A9ACB8E5BF717F03FAD42B7952C3C7.aspx?s=Avg
"""
/**
* Copyright (c) 2007, Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.
* Produced at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
* Written by D. Buttler ([XYZ1]@llnl.gov) and R. Pon ([XYZ2]@llnl.gov)
* CODE-400180 All rights reserved.
* This file is part of iScore Version 1.0
* Please also read this link � Our Notice and GNU General Public License.
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
* under the terms of the GNU General Public License (as published by the
* Free Software Foundation) version 2, dated June 1991.
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
* WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY
* or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the terms and conditions of the
GNU
* General Public License for more details.
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
* with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
* 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
*/
"""

Granted, LLNL is a government lab managed by a university, not the
"government" itself... But I don't see why government workers, who produce
in the public domain, can't submit patches to open source projects that are
under various licenses.

How many government employees use FireFox? How many supercomputer used by
the government has GNU/Linux on every node?

Anyway, I'm curious what situations you are thinking of.

Bryan Bishop

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Aug 8, 2010, 1:02:58 PM8/8/10
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com, Bryan Bishop
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> Granted, LLNL is a government lab managed by a university, not the
> "government" itself... But I don't see why government workers, who produce

Sorry, I wasn't aware about LLNL's specific legal setup, so that of course changes things, yes.


> in the public domain, can't submit patches to open source projects that are
> under various licenses.

They can submit patches, yes, since the patch is in the public domain it can be adopted by someone who then licenses it as whatever the original project is licensed as. Our friendly GNU.org has some more information:

Can the US Government release a program under the GNU GPL?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLUSGov

"If the program is written by US federal government employees in the course of their employment, it is in the public domain, which means it is not copyrighted. Since the GNU GPL is based on copyright, such a program cannot be released under the GNU GPL. (It can still be free software, however; a public domain program is free.) However, when a US federal government agency uses contractors to develop software, that is a different situation. The contract can require the contractor to release it under the GNU GPL. (GNU Ada was developed in this way.) Or the contract can assign the copyright to the government agency, which can then release the software under the GNU GPL."

Can the US Government release improvements to a GPL-covered program?
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLUSGovAdd

"Yes. If the improvements are written by US government employees in the course of their employment, then the improvements are in the public domain. However, the improved version, as a whole, is still covered by the GNU GPL. There is no problem in this situation. If the US government uses contractors to do the job, then the improvements themselves can be GPL-covered. "

Also while we're still talking about that Slashdot discussion, this was my first thought on it too:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1746980&cid=33176480
`You can only make something open source if you own the rights to it or manage to get the appropriate rights to someone else. You can't make something open source if the intellectual property rights are owned by someone else. So if, as claimed in the article, "haggling over the code's intellectual property rights has kept the software from going anywhere near Langley", then he shouldn't be able to take it open source at all. (Unless it just means that he had the rights and was haggling over giving them up.)`

Bryan Bishop

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Aug 8, 2010, 1:05:34 PM8/8/10
to openmanu...@googlegroups.com, Bryan Bishop
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
How many government employees use FireFox? How many supercomputer used by the government has GNU/Linux on every node?

Oh, I see what you did there. Yes, of course they can use open source software. I don't know what I was saying in my original email. I guess you can apply some twisted sense of logic that they can't "use open source software" in the sense of using the licensing model for distribution. But other than that, of course they can use Firefox and GNU/Linux and whatever else.

Paul D. Fernhout

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Aug 8, 2010, 2:27:33 PM8/8/10
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So, running with that, imagine this "Government Open Source Software" about
sensemaking that was like FireFox -- maybe even running on the Java JVM (but
maybe with parts written in Jython, Scala, and Lisp), using the local
machine for processing and 3D graphics.

Which kind of brings us back to: :-)
http://code.google.com/p/openvirgle/source/browse/

It would essentially be a structured argument browser, or a simulation
browser, or a few other things browser, maybe integrated with chat and email?

Of course, we already implemented something like that several years ago for
exactly this purpose, but, alas it is is proprietary. :-( And I'm not saying
it would be a great place to start either (I'd use some different
technologies this time perhaps now that RDF has matured rather than what it
used with plain XML), but it was intended as a demonstrator of the concepts,
as a starting point for iteration.

Unfortunately, the end client did not get the whole Extreme Programming idea
back then and that it was just a starting point for iterative design (not
really the client's fault, it was probably not well presented because of
some other inter-conractor political issues, scheduling issues, etc..) So it
was just tossed away after a lot of hard work staying up nights, a 24+ hour
marathon programming session at the end, etc..

And that's an example of exactly what the Wired article is about. No one can
build on the code. It's just a waste in that sense. Had it been done openly,
under a FOSS License, it would have been of much more value to the world.

I'm more than willing to say plenty of what I write ends up being worth not
using, as I did here on another (free) project I spent months on:
"PataPata critique: the good, the bad, the ugly"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/critique.html

But it bothers me when something I wrote is inaccessible for social/legal
"artificial scarcity" reasons, even when it has been deemed of no value to
the people who "own" it.

Thus my essays like this:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html

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