Has this gone anywhere?

[Sebastian Benthall]

Hi there,

I was pretty excited about this launching last summer.  I was wondering if any of you have made any progress on it and if so what the news is?

This year I've started to study the topic academically and may start trying to write about it in more visible venues.  I'd like to have my facts straight.

Thanks,
Seb

[Deborah Bryant]

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for checking in.

We took a break with our effort last fall at the recommendation of  a DC colleague who suggested not much headway would be made on the topic until after the elections, a noisy environment (and not likely part of anyone's campaign platform ;-)

And did not get restarted.  That doesn't help much for news for you right now, but we are regathering some of our efforts at Open Source for America, and will look to regroup in a few months. 

Are you studying the topic in the domestic context, or are you also looking abroad to understand what other countries are doing?

Thanks for asking, good to hear from you.

Cheers,

Deb Bryant

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[Sebastian Benthall]

Thanks for the update.

I've been keeping an ear out about other countries, mostly noting when there are interesting government uses of open source software.  Brazil's central bank has an open source project to help them with financial risk management which I have a hunch could be pitched as a way to create more economic stability.  But besides Brazil's laws which I believe many years ago insisted on open source in government (I think that's been lifted--it's been a long time since I looked into it) I can't think of anything.

What I've been surprised to learn is that there's a significant amount of legal scholarship on the topic advocating for open source software in many particular contexts--when it's a delegation of administrative authority, when it's "public infrastructure", and a couple other cases.  It's interesting to read arguments beyond the economic arguments. I was hoping to synthesize them together into something within a month or so.

I doubt arguments will persuade many people, though there are some high profile academics (the main guy behind this blog is the Chief Technologist of the FTC: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/the-new-freedom-to-tinker-movement/ ) who might be interested to reading them if there were a political movement to attach themselves to.  I was never clear on what your game plan was tactically.

Regards,

Seb