Ask Slashdot: How To Share a SharePoint Site? 151
New submitter grzzld writes "I am a systems analyst for a County in New York. Last year I made a SharePoint site that manages grants and it was well received. So much so that it won a NACo award. Since then, there have been several requests from other municipalities from around the country who would like to get this SharePoint site. The county is trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from people making money from it and having people hold us liable if it they use it and something goes awry. I am afraid that ultimately nothing will be done and the site will not be shared since at the end of the day it is much easier to not do anything and just say no. I proposed that we license it under an Open Source agreement but I am not versed enough in the differences between all of them. It is also unclear to me if I could do this since the nature of the 'program' is a SharePoint site. It seemed like CodePlex would be a good place to put this since it is Microsoft centric and it an open source initiative. I just want to contribute my work to others who may find it useful. The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck. How can I release this to the world and make sure the county's concerns are addressed?"
Warranty disclaimer's the important thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Public Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
FYI, if I remember right all works by a public employee while employed are to be in the public domain. This is at least true for federal workers.
Re:Public Domain (Score:4, Informative)
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Using a bog-standard BSD/GPL license addresses liability, it just doesn't fix the fear of managers and lawyers inexperienced with releasing software. The poster could try writing a short email linking Google licenses, the FSF, the EFF and others.
The real problem will be support: I can't fix a SharePoint package if it doesn't install right, so you have to release all the code, and if you want it to succeed, you'll also need to write documentation and answer email/forum questions. Does your employer want you
Re:Warranty disclaimer's the important thing (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a similar issue working in publicly funded healthcare. Some things I've created (I own the IP but don't really care that much one way or another) my hospital has difficulties commercializing for several reasons but biggest being liablity. Even if our license says we aren't responsible if another hospital has their operations impacted we will be expected to help out since it is all the governments money. Does the hospital I work for want to get $500 and then be liable for God knows how much of my time spent debugging crap if things goes wrong? Millions of dollars in internal projects get wasted each year because of fear of liability so each hospital ends up doing the same thing on their own and not willing to share. Silly.
what's wrong with making money? (Score:2)
The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable and have somebody turn my work around and make a buck.
who cares if somebody makes a buck? this sounds like sour grapes on the part of the county. They're in no position to monitize it (they shouldn't be anyway, or else they're wasting taxpayer money on business ventures?). Let somebody else make some dough.
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I loath Microsoft and closed-source software, and "walk the walk" (I use a total of 4 proprietary programs), but this comment is beyond worthless. The poster says that the site works great, and wants to share it with other groups. You are basically saying "no it doesn't." And there is no analysis as to why that might be the case. You might as well have just screamed nonsenically in anger.
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It was a joke. Woosh.
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Nope, it was a joke. I think I'd fucking know, I posted it.
GTFO yourself.
Maybe you should learn how to tell jokes better.
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Well, I won't argue with you there - you have a point!
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The sad thing is, as someone who's used and created sharepoint sites, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work great without seeing any proof. Maybe it works great for a sharepoint site, but that's like saying my refrigerator is a pretty good family sedan, for a refrigerator.
I'm not claiming the parent comment (or, for that matter, this port) are in any way worthwhile, but sharepoint DOES evoke these feelings on occasion. The amount of voodoo required to get it to work the way you want it, and the ease with whi
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I agree with you completely. People who actually like sharepoint are the ones I always ask: compared to what? What do you use it for? They have no idea that it really is a crapfest of things that others have figured out how to do better elsewhere....and usually for free.
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For a moment there I thought you were describing a FreeBSD system with any modern hardware. Then I remembered that FreeBSD doesn't support the latest Intel Video cards or most high end "wireless N" cards either.
Re:quick how-to (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft does not make computers, or make them cheaper. That trend was started by hardware manufacturers competing with IBM with clean room implementations of the bios, and continued with netbooks etc. Nice rewrite of history.
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You should have ended your post with viable alternatives.
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True enough, but my post was meant entirely in jest.
I hate Sharepoint as much as the next person who's been forced to use it, so I beg pardon for having a little fun at it's expense.
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I usually try to replace Sharepoint with Wiki or Drupal installations. Sharepoint does a lot of different stuff; I don't think there's a single drop-in replacement available in the land of OSS projects, but in my experience a lot of the time workgroups are barely scratching the surface of what they could be doing with it anyway.
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Drupal is an excellent replacement. My workplace has been phasing out sharepoint recently, and drupal + contributed modules has covered a lot of the functionality nicely. You still have to write some custom modules to completely replicate it (or at least the parts of sharepoint you use, YMMV), but every project that has been replaced with drupal so far has been, and I quote from the folks using the site, "Like a beautiful sunny morning after a terrible, terrible nightmare".
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Do nothing. (Score:2, Insightful)
CYA and don't share anything. If they want it badly enough, they can contract you to build something similar.
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All they have to do is file a FOIA request and "force" you to turn over the codebase, what they do with it after that is not your concern or liability...
perhaps you could even automate handling of FOIA requests for the automation of FOIA request requests, which in turn handles automation of FOIA requests for the automated grant handler...
I think I got that close enough...
-nB
Re:Do nothing. (Score:5, Funny)
perhaps you could even automate handling of FOIA requests for the automation of FOIA request requests, which in turn handles automation of FOIA requests for the automated grant handler...
A SharePoint workflow might be able to handle that.
Can you say "lawyer"? (Score:1, Informative)
The county wants to make sure no one can make a profit off of this, AND they want to make sure no one can sue them?
1) GET
2) A
3) LAWYER
Surely the county must have one or two floating around who can do this. This is not an IT function. Sheesh! Learn where your boundaries are, boy.
Re:Can you say "lawyer"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Every year a company comes drops down a freedom of information act for a particular piece of software in our state. They take it and go out and make money with it. Every year I argue that we should just put it out on the Internet so we can save the freedom of information act request time and money. Whats wrong with giving back the tax dollars in research to help put someone (and their employees) to work?
Put an Affero License on it. (Score:2)
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Absolutely. But bear in mind that sometimes you'll be ignored unless you start someone else's job for them. If you hand them a stack of half-true claims, sometimes it will induce them to go look up facts. (or it could just make them mad, but they presumably weren't doing their jobs to begin with)
On another note: the derogatory "boy" has a racial tone to it, and should be avoided unless you know for sure you're not addressing someone of color. I really wish our language wasn't being co-opted by innuendo
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On another note: the derogatory "boy" has a racial tone to it
Yes, in the US, but only among blacks. You'll hear one redneck referring to another redneck as a "good ol' boy" but not a black man. The reason is slavery. Slaves were not considered people, they were regarded in the same way as a horse or a dog -- a work animal. How do you call your dog? "Here, boy!" So when you call a black man "boy" you're saying he's subhuman. Of course they're going to take it as an insult, and I, for one, can't blame them fo
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Yes, in the US, but only among blacks... The reason is slavery.
Uh, yeah. And? Were you expounding for the general reader, or did you think I missed that somehow?
To reiterate: "the derogatory "boy" has a racial tone to it, and should be avoided unless you know for sure you're not addressing someone of color."
Of course they're going to take it as an insult, and I, for one, can't blame them for being offended.
It retained it's negative connotation through out segregation, and into simmering racial tensions. The fact remains that the wounds will not fully heal until they can put such things behind them. There are many different life circumstances in the nation, but most
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I was expounding for the general reader. Not eveyone knows why "boy" is racist.
The fact remains that the wounds will not fully heal until they can put such things behind them.
I couldn't agree more. 150 years ago the Irish were "spades" and were looked down on, "Mick" was a derogatory term for the Irish. Now Americans of Irish descent are proud to call themselves "Micks" and tell jokes about drunken Irishmen.
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This one? (Score:4, Informative)
Online Grants Management System
Suffolk County, New York
Population: 1,493,350 (2010)
Program Year: 2011
Abstract:
In Suffolk County, NY, the development of grant applications as well as the coordination of successfully funded grants across was determined to be an inefficient system.. Individual staff and programmatic units each kept their own separate monitoring and tracking systems that recorded different levels and phases of grants. In some instances, there were gaps in the collection of information. An interdisciplinary group convened to discuss the problem and to plan for improvements. The planning group brainstormed and used additional quality improvement strategies in order to develop the Grants management System (GMS). GMS has developed as a centralized tracking and coordination system that tracks grants through very phase: the evaluation of whether to apply for a Request for proposal (RFP), application submission, grant award, acceptance of the award by the county, development and finalization of contracts, inventory management, monitoring of expenditures, claiming, revenue receipting, grants reporting, grants purchases, etc. Feedback from SCDHS staff indicated a high level of satisfaction with GMS, improved knowledge and skills, improved management and implementation of grants. Due to the improved efficiencies of GMS, the SCDHS was able to reduce the grants staff by 2 Full Time Equivalents (FTE), with significant cost savings.
Re:This one? (Score:4, Funny)
Due to the improved efficiencies of GMS, the SCDHS was able to reduce the grants staff by 2 Full Time Equivalents (FTE), with significant cost savings.
Hey, I was one of those Full Time Equivalents, you insensitive clod.
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Why can't anyone make a buck? (Score:5, Interesting)
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For some strange reason, many reasonable and successful adults still have a playground mentality when it comes to sharing the ball, even when it's someone else's ball. The only difference is that the fights happen inside the courtroom instead of behind the equipment shed.
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so while I agree with your first comment, that the situation is far more complex than your example, I disagree with your second comment, that the basi
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I'm sure the fear is that a commercial company will simply copy their work, and then go around selling it to other agencies without substantial improvement.
Stuff like this happens all the time in government contracting.
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I'm sure the fear is that a commercial company will simply copy their work, and then go around selling it to other agencies without substantial improvement.
Stuff like this happens all the time in government contracting.
While I cannot directly speak for the powers that be, I believe this is their concern.
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Oh, and if anything goes wrong with it and they want to sue, I'll say I contracted it out you and they can sue you or bug you for support.
Typically anonymous and cowardly troll. Nobody is suggesting they not indemnify themselves. The question is why be so concerned about monetization downstream. I don't want to contribute to any project that prohibits monetization because I live in a capitalism and I occasionally need money to get stuff done, like, all the damn time.
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Say commercial company scrapes and reuses public data, the public entity does some important updates to said data (as they should) and commercial Co either doesn't notice decides not to update theirs (too expensive) Now commercial co is selling bad data, when customer sues company claims ignorance of the change and points the finger at the public entity for not informing them of the change or somthing else along those lines.
Case in point: In California (and other sates) there are local Child Care Resource
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Sure they can. That is the broken thing with civil suits. You don't have to be wrong. The other guy just has to think he has more money/better lawyers than you and so you'll settle before the court gets around to throwing it out (or as they occasionally do give them the win even without a real case). That is the problem I have with most software I make, I'd like to give it away, my employer in spirit would like to give it away but in practice it is a few hundred dollars a sale, maybe $20k a year without a l
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What is it with this fear that someone will make a buck? It does not diminish the value of the original work, rather it ads to it. The county should focus on what their job is and if somebody actually manages to create something valuable from that - great!
The government doesn't appreciate people generating a profit using their systems. It sets a bad precedent. Next thing you know, the people will expect them to run efficiently as well.
ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! (Score:1)
Many licenses, both open source, copyleft, and proprietary contain wording similar to:
There is no warranty for the program, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program “as is” without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of
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And what is the "extent permitted by applicable law"? I can see this could still be a liability concern.
By "Site" what are we talking? (Score:4, Informative)
The site schema? Custom web-parts? Masterpages? Data? Everything?
You could create a site definition that contained as much or as little or as much as your site as you wanted; wrap it up in a Visual Studio solution/WSP and then people could deploy an instance of your site with all of the above pre-previsioned. At that point it's just a SharePoint extension so would be no different to open-sourcing an Office extension. Even better, site templates are largely just XML files so it's even less "complicated" than custom-code - it's all just parsed by the core product.
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agreed, if it is just a few web parts and "theme" then package the bits up and put them on codeplex. It's a shame you used sharepoint, if this was a (say) Drupal site, then you could just zip up the entire site and deliver it as-is, sql DB and all, and tell the recipients "this is what I did, all yours as an open source gift as if you'd developed it yourself".
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You can do the same thing with SharePoint solutions now. Granted there are still some quirks.
Why it took Microsoft 7 years to make them functional enough to use after the launch of SharePoint I have no idea.
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Most of that time the SP tools team spent writing a method to distinguish between various kinds of COMExceptions. ~
(Yes, I did develop for SharePoint. These are the scars that don't heal.)
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they should have done it in VB.NET, catching exceptions by exception number is trivial in that. C# is the poorer cousin by comparison.
Mind you, nothing much wrong with COM exceptions, maybe it was just the programmers using those .net exceptions that wrapped them that was the problem.
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The problem in this case is that SharePoint API is entirely .NET-based, but in practice it's a wrapper (sometimes more and sometimes less thin) around a lot of COM stuff. And they didn't bother to wrap exceptions, for the most part, so it is very common to call some API, have it fail, and get a COMException that tells absolutely nothing about what went wrong. If you're really lucky, you'll get a meaningful message in it (from IErrorInfo), but more often than not it's just E_FAIL with no further explanation.
As a fellow Public Employee (Score:1)
I work for another muni and have encountered similar questions about software we have developed. You need to take this to your legal department to determine which licenses are acceptable to your legal department before you start asking Slashdot/reddit/intertubes any of these questions. You may find that the GPL is a great license which you whole heartily support only to have your legal department say "WTF?! No!" or worse depending on your clauses within your muni. Once you get legals take on what licenses a
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But to get the bean-counters to swallow the GPL while simultaneously getting geeks to swallow MS's monstrosity, in the public sector... That has got to be the hardest sell I've ever h
is there really a liability concern? (Score:2)
People often list liability as a potential concern when they open source software, but is that a valid concern? Has any organization been sued because software they released to the world when they don't guarantee that it will do anything useful?
If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding
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It's the US. There are *always* liability concerns.
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If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding the source, maybe they shouldn't be using it.
You mean like recalling and banning lawn darts because people are too stupid to figure out not to throw them at each other or stand under them when throwing them straight up? Or like all those people that (using your example) listened to their realtors/brokers and couldn't figure out that no they really couldn't afford that house? Or maybe like the guy that just won class action status against Apple because he was too busy to be a parent and use the tools Apple provided so his kid ran up a "large" bill with
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If I open source a mortgage calculator that does an incorrect calculation, does anyone really have the grounds to sue me? After all, they have the source code, and are just as capable as me of finding a mistake in the code. And if they aren't capable of understanding the source, maybe they shouldn't be using it.
You mean like recalling and banning lawn darts because people are too stupid to figure out not to throw them at each other or stand under them when throwing them straight up? Or like all those people that (using your example) listened to their realtors/brokers and couldn't figure out that no they really couldn't afford that house? Or maybe like the guy that just won class action status against Apple because he was too busy to be a parent and use the tools Apple provided so his kid ran up a "large" bill with micro payments?
In the US people will sue over anything and really licenses and agreements mean less than which judge you get and what type of mood they are in that day. I understand and agree with the idea that you shouldn't be able to sign away your rights, but that should be balanced by common sense and responsibility (e.g. it's not the MFGs fault that a dart impaled you if you stood under it).
Yes, interesting examples of the litigious nature of Americans (but I think the lawn dart case had merit - few would expect a toy marketed toward children to have the potential to penetrate a child's skull when the very nature of the game involves tossing the dart in the air so even if used properly such an accident could occur), but do you have examples of an open source software developer was sued (whether successfully or unsuccessfully) when the software he provided for free with no warranty didn't do wh
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Darts which were sold. For money. This is product liablility. The key word is "product": something you sell. Giving away software with no expectation of being compensated creates no duty and therefor no liability.
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For most companies, liability is just an excuse to force the workers do something, even when there is no legitimate (aka public) reason.
Like making your delivery drivers buy their own liability insurance ($80 un-reimbursed per month), even when the company already has full liability insurance for all the drivers. Then they use that EXTREMELY strict insurance policy requirement (no more than 2 speeding tickets in 2 years, and no DUI ever in your lifetime) to selectively not hire people. All in the name of "l
Making money from it (Score:1)
The county is trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from people making money from it
Why do they care if someone can improve it and make money from it?
Why are so many people scared to release something into the public domain for the greater good?
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Keep in mind these people aren't artists, engineers, or anything like that. Their job isn't to do some airy-fairey "improve the world" BS, it's to get the best value for the money for their taxpayers. And if they release this program, somebody gets rich off it, their taxpayers are gonna be pissed. Their tax-money went to getting some guy rich. The question their bosses will be answering at the next Commission meeting isn't "How did you do the great thing of making that dude rich?," it'll be "Why was my tax
Making money (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you care if others make money off it? It's government developed so that means it was funded by taxpayer money.
All taxpayers should have access to it, even if they want to make money from it. It should automatically be public domain.
You can still CYA by a simple BSD style license.
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Actually, that would be "All taxpayers in that county should have access to it..." since they paid for it. Yet they are considering going quite a bit beyond that group.
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Most counties get Federal funding that contributes to their budget. So some portion of it could be considered any US taxpayer.
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No, the flaw is that you are talking about physical property, not intellectual property. Also, it's something that's covered by national security.
By law, the federal government does not retain copyright on anything it produces, but it can retain copyright on things transferred to it. This means any documents, source code, etc.. is in the public domain by default.
This is also why there's a thing called the "Freedom of Information act" that forces the government to disclose documents that are not secret.
Yes
NACo Award (Score:2, Interesting)
No offense, but I won a NACo award as well...in the 90s. Seems cool, but I am aware that ANY submitted project 'wins'.
I am not so certain I'd be using this award as a statement of how awesome the work is.
* I am not saying the work is not awesome, just that this is not a good measurement.
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Just like all the "vendor" awards people are always going on about at my work. Stupidist. Thing. Ever. "Look I managed to use your software to do what it said I could do!"
Hurray! Lets give em an award!
Share the template and any custom code (Score:2)
Under an open-source license and be sure to include disclaimers about providing no warranty as to its functionality and suitability for what they're trying to do with it. Best choice would be to consult with a good lawyer who has worked with a "free" distribution of software before. Only in America would you need a lawyer to give something away safely, but here we are.
Gotta Redirect Your Question (Score:1)
Don't give anyone access to your own infrastructure. Maybe offer to do a backup / restore or otherwise make copies, but offer these options to a busi
Talk to a lawyer! (Score:4, Insightful)
If the county wants to share but is concerned about liability, THEY SHOULD TALK TO THEIR ON-STAFF/ IN-HOUSE/ ON-RETAINER legal counsel!
They have them, I guarantee it. Use them. The last they want is a tech guy (who has already admitted he doesn't know the implications of the various licenses) fumbling around to figure this out.
If they really really don't want to talk to their own legal counsel, then just prepare an instruction list that other municipalities could follow and publish that instead of trying to distribute the whole kit-and-kaboodle.
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I think that needs to be qualified with "knowledgeable in the field". A standard lawyer approach when facing uncertainty is: don't do it. With that mentality, you're going nowhere. You need to talk to someone who understands what this is about.
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The county is already paying for legal counsel. Whether that's a full-time employee or an outside firm on retainer, they are paying for this service. The submitter needs to talk to them. Then he can help the legal team do the legwork for collecting appropriate licenses or such if they aren't sufficiently "knowledgeable in the field".
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There is liability and then there is liability. So the license says you aren't liable but NYC just had a major service go down because your program got corrupted. Sure you're not liable but your county is going to be all over the news as the source of the problem, if you refuse to drop what you are doing and work for free to fix the problem you'll come out as the villain all in the name of giving something away.
Heck they'd come after you when they decide they need a new feature to implement a "great idea" o
"protect ourselves from people making money" (Score:2)
Protect yourselves from what? How would it harm you if someone made money from it?
> The county just wants to make sure they can't be held liable
People have been releasing Free software for thirty years or more with impunity. The University of California has not been sued over bugs in BSD. Linus Trovalds has not been sued over bugs in Linux. Why do you think you will be sued?
This is best handled by private companies... (Score:2)
You exist a government entity and have one purpose and one sole purpose alone and that is to serve the residents of your municipality. You are clearly not in the business of making money through profit seeking endeavors.
With that being said, you worked hard on this and it seems to be a huge success, so the municipality should benefit greatly from such an endeavor. You may have something that works great for you but honestly Sharepoint is really only good for internal apps and you certainly do not have a s
You really can't do that easily (Score:2)
Share a share point? (Score:1)
Other places to ask / look. (Score:2)
I'm guessing that Code for America, Open Source for America, or Civic Commons would have some experience in dealing with these issues, and have suggestions:
...and sure enough, it looks like Civic Commons has a page on legal policy, which includes ''Legal Issues and Best Practices With Converting/Contributing In-House Developed Code into a Reusable FOSS Project [civiccommons.org]". Also take a look under Chapter 4, as there's a bit of a
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It amazes me how few public employees actually know these sites exist. When I am consulting I find that the public sector is so f-ing brain dead when it comes to partnering and saving money that it hurts.
Give it to the state (Score:2)
New York State Senate releases all the software they develop under a dual GPL3/BSD license. Pas it up to them to release and let them deal with it...
http://www.nysenate.gov/developers/
You realize you just won the argument? (Score:2)
If their major concern is that if we release it somebody will make money off of it then they need to release it, and release it in such a way that nobody can make money off of it. If somebody's able to make money off it, then clearly it's very useful, and it would be churlish to keep it to yourselves. You release it open source, with a No Guarantees license to prevent you from being sued when some jackass figures out a way to use it to turn over his entire Parket Ticket Payment Database to identity thieves.
good question (Score:1)
Easy (Score:1)
If you are running Sharepoint on Windows (Score:1)