Wow. This is a big, F-you to the open software, anti DRM, security through transparency movements. I find it very highly disturbing.
But, I came here to expand on this post a little. Yes, we need source codes, and we also need things like testing and for some cases, certification of the tool chain used to make the software. Consider this brief piece on trust from the ACM:
It’s not a long read, nor all that difficult. It is really worth your time, because it gets right at the nature of trust, and how just having source code isn’t anywhere near enough! Couple this understanding with Lessig, and the ideas in “CODE” and it’s not hard to arrive at a state of real, genuine concern about the ambiguity of it all and the impact that can have on all of us as ordinary people.
The big argument, from their point of view, is software is hard, it’s got IP in it, and having all that exposure creates liabilities that make the whole thing not worth doing. And they might be right about that too. And if they are, having public software efforts might be necessary to establish meaningful trust that we all can live with.
Nobody talks much about that. Why? I say, it’s the money and maybe even more basically, control. The prospect of a digital divide, hidden, is a legal playground for people who really want to actualize controversial ideas in society. Who needs actual law that actual people can talk about, when software can accomplish the same basic thing with no real accountability?
Total wet dream for just the sorts of people who really shouldn’t be in that position of control, sans accountability in the first place.
Finally, I was involved with the movement to get the State of Oregon to consider Open Source in the early 00’s. The opposition to open software did everything they could to crush the idea. They were successful, and their success was due to the corruption Larry is trying to get us to get serious about too. (a donation and a coupla lunches shut down legislation that had bi-partisan support otherwise)
Portland Oregon paid a company to make a water billing system that was terrible. They paid millions for it too, and they pay for fixes, updates, whatever, and most importantly, they really don’t own the code they paid for. They have a license and all that, but the public dollars did more to provide a revenue stream for somebody than they did actually make an asset.
What a lot of us saw wrong centered in on the idea that we know we could have taken that very large sum of money, used it to start a foundation for creating that software. That foundation could be making jobs for people in Oregon, and it could have paid reasonable wages, and it would own the code, and could make that code open too. For the same, or more likely a lesser sum, that civic problem could have been solved, updated, fixed, etc… and once done, operate in a transparent way. Secondly, that foundation could offer that software to any other municipality looking to solve the same, or a similar problem! With things being open, others could pay for help, to support the foundation, or just take the code and do their own thing with it too, perhaps starting their own for the public good.
Essentially, the problem of water system billing is a solvable one. Once solved, we get something that looks a lot like real infrastructure! And doing that takes a ton of the cost out of government, improves trust, operates correctly, can be reviewed by citizens, and held to account under the law, and the data and in general, work of the public, can be in open formats, usable by anyone running anything at all! All of these things are really important, high value things.
At that time, most of the legislators actually got it! Some of us served as consultants to talk with them, educate them, and get them to understand how software isn’t the same as a physical thing, but it’s place in society is very much the same as basic infrastructure, as are the risks and costs.
We are headed in all the wrong directions on this stuff. Computing offers the promise of greater productivity and efficiency. As a public work, this makes great sense. All of that value gets diluted when we can’t actually evaluate the software. And reverse engineering it to make open things to recapture those gains as actual public good? Forget it.
This TPP is very depressing. We very seriously need to get active.
