Open Source and Government Data Rights?

IAAL asks: "I am a long-time Slashdot lurker and I have an opportunity to speak to a group of tech folks who are involved in developing software for the federal government. Can anyone point me to any good information or discussions regarding the intersection of government data rights and open-source licensing? I am doing some research now and if I come across anything of note I will submit it here."

data rights?

[oni]

Can you clarify what data rights are?

There is no "licensing"

[gristlebud]

I work for a DOD contractor that, in part, developes sofware, hardware and technologies. When a person or company developes software for the government, the government owns all rights to the software. It is up to them to determine how to release it. I've have had my stuff given to a competitor, and have had my competitor's stuff given to me. The justification from the government (my customer) was: "I paid for it, I can do what I want with it."

If you choose to develop a derivitave work on GPL tools, such that the government would be restricted on the re-release of the software, then your best bet would be to disclose that as early as possible in the project, preferably in the proposal phase. Most of time it won't be a problem, as the government is most interested in the quality/value of a product, rather than protecting their own IP rights.

Talking about DOD

[PeteQC]

I don't know if that is what you're searching for, but MITRE corporation did a nice case study about OSS for the DOD, you can find it there: http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_ 01/kenwood_software/index.html [mitre.org]

Which Rights?

[4of12]

There's little problem with government being a user of free and open source software, no more than an individual or a company. But, like the individual or company, the government will have to weigh the value of support, costs of lock-in, etc.

Most governments have little problem with the GPL requirement that

• if they modify the software AND
• if they distribute modified software

that they must distribute the modified source.

The "share and share alike" part of the GPL integrates well with government modifications, IMHO. Even when government generated software finds its way out into the commercial arena, there are usually safeguards along the lines of "the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive license to use". They like to get back and leverage the advantages of software in which they had a hand in contributing.

The government has funded public works projects (roads, etc) in physical space for some time. What's not as widely known is how much government has supported public works projects in the form of FOSS.

Plusses for the government to use FOSS include not just limited to a reduced acquisition cost or reduced lock-in costs down the line.

A lot of government business is tied up in document formats and databases that cannot be accessed indefinitely. Vendors upgrade their products and cease support for old versions. With the source code available for their business functions, government is much better able to protect its information investment in the long term. Should the time come for data conversion, they'll be in a much better position.

Finally, in terms of interacting with the public, government can adhere to zero-cost public standards, not necessarily by requiring the government use FOSS, but by requiring that all interfaces between software use completely specified, free (speech and beer), formats and protocols (you known, Latin alphabet, ASCII encoding, English language, etc.). A government that doesn't interact with the public unless it coughs up money (to buy some piece of software) can hardly be said to operating in the public's interest.

Re:Which Rights?

[Spoing]

Most governments have little problem with the GPL requirement that

• if they modify the software AND
• if they distribute modified software

that they must distribute the modified source.

There's part of what you say that implies that if any distribution occurs the source must be provide to everyone. If this is what you mean, it's a common misconception, and it is often repeated.

Here's the important difference -- and it covers software under a GPL-style license only;

• If you distribute within your orginzat

105

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, one of the very important aspects to this question would seem to be 17 USC 105: Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise

IIRC, the way this works out is that government employees, or contractors operating in effect as government employees (i.e. doing the same job), in the scope of their duties, can create works but those works are wholly ineligible for copyrights. (and some uses of such works may necessitate a proper notice per 17 USC 403)

So if you develop software for the federal government, barring some special arrangement that isolates the work from the government sufficiently, that software is in the public domain. Thus I don't think there could possibly be any force behind licensing it meaningfully. And the license would likely only have any impact on people that had privity with the government, so third parties who nevertheless somehow acquired the software could do with it as they pleased.

Frankly, this is desirable. The government should publish its software, and should publish the source code to that software, without copyrights, and without any kind of licensing whatsoever.

OS/FS in gov eGovOs.org

[equitator]

Hi Cliff,

One of the better groups of people on this issue can be reached starting at http://www.eGovOs.org [egovos.org].

egovos for eGov Open Source, naturally.

The people at there are also responsive, like, if you ask them a question they answer this century.

Have a good talk.