<div dir="ltr">Thanks for staying in the loop with us , Dana. The open source community appreciates your effort toward keeping us up to date. <div><br></div><div>Best- Brent </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Dana Debeauvoir <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Dana.Debeauvoir@traviscountytx.gov" target="_blank">Dana.Debeauvoir@traviscountytx.gov</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Dear Brent,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">At this stage, I am gathering responses from the RFI.
<i> </i>I want to hear what contributors have to say first on a variety of important issues. Not ready for an update on your issue at this time. Thank you for staying in touch.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Best, Dana<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Brent Turner [mailto:<a href="mailto:turnerbrentm@gmail.com" target="_blank">turnerbrentm@gmail.com</a>]
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<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, July 07, 2015 10:06 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Dana Debeauvoir; Dan Wallach; Michael Winn; <a href="mailto:dlogan@rrcc.lacounty.gov" target="_blank">dlogan@rrcc.lacounty.gov</a><br>
<b>Cc:</b> Bob Nash; Alec Bash; Tim Mayer; Schwab, James; Brian Fox; Lawrence Rosen; <a href="mailto:Scott.Wiener@sfgov.org" target="_blank">Scott.Wiener@sfgov.org</a>; Patrick Masson<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: {EXTERNAL} Fwd: [CAVO] Why CAVO recommends GPLv3 for election software<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Dana : <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I wanted to check in for any updates regarding your licensing issue. I have added Patrick Masson from Open Source Initiative as a cc for your convenience.. OSI is currently working with the White House and is a good resource to make sure
the government is adhering to open source standards. see <a href="http://www.opensource.org" target="_blank">
www.opensource.org</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Please let me know of any progress and how we might assist further. I have still not heard back from Dean or Jared.. so the L.A. project is still an unknown. Good news- we recently had information sharing with the US House of Representatives
and they are getting up to speed on the standards as well. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Best again-<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Brent <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 9:49 PM, Brent Turner <<a href="mailto:turnerbrentm@gmail.com" target="_blank">turnerbrentm@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you for responding, Dana. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dean Logan in L.A. County has been given this same information.. I have cc'd Dean and others here. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">San Francisco is working through these same issues. The vendors and intellectual property community reps are attempting to purport there is no clear definition to open source. The open source community recognizes this as a ploy toward
delaying the adoption of open source as well as what is referred to as " open washing " i.e . selling/inserting a non-open source code while calling it open source. Luckily there is now a large enough community standard and enough expertise to thwart these
attempts. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">We are speaking with the EAC and others about this work in progress, attempting to get them up to speed on the open source technology. We have also reached to Jared Marcotte from Pew, who is one the leads on the L.A. project , but like
Dean Logan he has not yet responded. This lack of response further raises the concerns of the open source community, as conversation and a group approach is part and parcel to the open source community's general approach to transparency. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks again for staying in this dialogue. OSI and CAVO are gald to lend their experts to your project in hopes we can set the proper standard for the rest of the country to follow. <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Best regards, <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Brent <u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 1:23 PM, Dana Debeauvoir <<a href="mailto:Dana.Debeauvoir@traviscountytx.gov" target="_blank">Dana.Debeauvoir@traviscountytx.gov</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Thank you for the info on GPL v3, Brent.
</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d">Best, Dana</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1f497d"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"> Brent Turner [mailto:<a href="mailto:turnerbrentm@gmail.com" target="_blank">turnerbrentm@gmail.com</a>]
<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, June 17, 2015 12:30 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Eric Bauman; Brigette Hunley; angela lee; Bob Nash; Dana Debeauvoir; Fried, Jason (BOS); Ruthee Goldkorn; Dale Ho<br>
<b>Subject:</b> {EXTERNAL} Fwd: [CAVO] Why CAVO recommends GPLv3 for election software</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>
From: <b>Lawrence Rosen</b> <<a href="mailto:lrosen@rosenlaw.com" target="_blank">lrosen@rosenlaw.com</a>><br>
Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 10:18 AM<br>
Subject: [CAVO] Why CAVO recommends GPLv3 for election software<br>
To: CAVO <<a href="mailto:cavo@opensource.org" target="_blank">cavo@opensource.org</a>><br>
Cc: Lawrence Rosen <<a href="mailto:lrosen@rosenlaw.com" target="_blank">lrosen@rosenlaw.com</a>><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#505050;background:white">[I wrote this article last November. While I sought then to encourage an OSI-approved "FOSS" license, I also specifically recommended
GPLv3. Now that we have a discussion list, it is appropriate to circulate this proposal here for discussion. If we're going to select a specific license for our software, we ought to decide that here in our open source community. :-) /Larry]</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#505050;background:white"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#505050;background:white">***********************</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">There are many ways to distribute software. Valuable software nowadays is usually distributed under a free and open source
license (FOSS license, in short), both because it is usually "free of cost" software but also "free of restrictions" on copying, making changes, and redistributing that software.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">There are various open source licenses to choose from. They are listed at the<a href="http://www.opensource.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#1155cc">
www.opensource.org </span></a>website. Unless a license is listed at that website, most developers and potential customers won't call it FOSS software. The OSET Foundation Public License (OPL), a license recently proposed for an election software project,
is not a FOSS license. <a href="http://static.squarespace.com/static/528d46a2e4b059766439fa8b/t/53558db1e4b0191d0dc6912c/1398115761233/OPL_FAQ_Apr14.pdf" target="_blank">
<span style="color:#336699">[1]</span></a></span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">FOSS licenses offer several distinct ways to give software away.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">Choosing among those licenses for software is not an arbitrary game of darts. For open source election software that can
be trusted and always free, the choice of license is particularly important. That is why I recommend the General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3) as the best license to use. This article gives several important reasons why.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· Among the many FOSS licenses, GPLv3 is the most modern, widely accepted, and best understood license available
today. Its predecessor license, GPLv2, is historically far and away the most used worldwide; GPLv3 is replacing it in the rate of license adoption for new FOSS software. </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· GPLv3 is a reciprocal license. Once a project or distributor releases election software under the GPLv3, it
will remain FOSS software in perpetuity under the GPLv3 license. Modifications to that FOSS software will also be distributed in perpetuity under the GPLv3. This guarantees that our election software won't ever be taken under commercial covers and turned into
proprietary software with unacceptable lock-in and source code restrictions that make voting untrustworthy.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· The GPLv3 license promotes open and shared development efforts. While it is possible to create excellent open
source software under more permissive FOSS licenses, those licenses allow commercial fragmentation of the software. That isn't appropriate for widely used election software.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· The GPLv3 encourages trustworthy software. There is a law of software development named in honor of Linus Torvalds
stating that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"; or more formally: "Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone."
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law" target="_blank"><span style="color:#336699">[2]</span></a> GPLv3 software projects invite eyeballs on all distributed versions of the software to identify bugs and security issues; other licenses don't always
do that.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· Although GPLv3 will specifically encourage FOSS development practices for the election code base and its derivative
works, that GPLv3 license is nevertheless compatible with successful commercial software and support business as well. One need only refer to the robust Linux ecosystem and its contribution to diverse commercial technology worldwide, whose basic software is
entirely under the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licenses. The GPL licenses made that possible.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">· GPLv3 will encourage innovation because GPLv3 source code is open to view and change.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#505050;background:white"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">For these reasons, CAVO recommends that election software be distributed under GPLv3. This will inevitably create a diverse, worldwide,
and enthusiastic community of software developers to create election systems we can all trust.</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><strong><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050">Footnotes:</span></strong><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"><a href="http://static.squarespace.com/static/528d46a2e4b059766439fa8b/t/53558db1e4b0191d0dc6912c/1398115761233/OPL_FAQ_Apr14.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color:#336699">[1]</span></a>
The OSET Foundation claim on their website that their license is "an open source software license" is simply untrue. They can try to make it so by submitting their license to
<a href="http://www.opensource.org" target="_blank">www.opensource.org</a> and following OSI's published license review process. While I am merely an observer nowadays of that license review and approval process, as former general counsel for OSI I am confident
that certain provisions in that license make it incompatible with the GPLv3 despite the assertion on OSET's own website that it is.
</span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:white;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#505050"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law" target="_blank"><span style="color:#336699">[2]</span></a> Wikipedia
Entry on "Linus's Law" <br>
<br>
*<em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Lawrence Rosen is a CAVO member, an attorney and a computer specialist. He is founding partner of Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a law firm that specializes in intellectual property protection, licensing and business
transactions for software technology. Larry served for many years as general counsel of the non-profit Open Source Initiative (OSI). He currently advises many open source companies and non-profit open source projects. Larry's book, </span></em><strong><i><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">"Open
Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law</span></i></strong><em><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">", was published by Prentice Hall in 2004. He also taught Open Source Law at Stanford Law School. Larry often publishes and
speaks around the world on open source and intellectual property issues.</span></em></span><u></u><u></u></p>
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