Community commentary: Encouraging open code in public procurement policies

Rod Gammon AEG-Inc at hawaii.rr.com
Sun Feb 10 12:54:48 PST 2002


Aloha-

My take, in reply to the comment at newsforge on requiring open source
(subsequent to Warren's posted article):

I am convinced that public science must be open source, this is the basic,
modern principle of accountability or verifiable results. How convinced? My
own scientific software is GPL (nlp stuff for Mandarin, try it you'll like
it.) So at the least NSF and universities should require open source from
their researchers. As researchers (those of us here) we should demand our
colleagues use open systems, just as we demand that they declare all their
other parameters in a study. In the case of universities that don't require
open and help patent such software- I urge each of you to join me in
demanding a rebate check on our share of tax dollars enjoyed by those
institutions. Why pay someone to develop something they will charge us for
later? Any free market capitalists in the house tonight? Now this is
actually sort of in place already. Having worked on educational software
under federal grant, many projects are granted to design an open framework
(e.g., testing apparatus) and then various units (particular tests) can be
later developed proprietary. It seems a standard model- open infrastructure,
proprietary content. But it is not widespread, to my knowledge. Ideas on how
to make it widespread?

-rg



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