Question on OSD #5

[Ben Tilly]

On Nov 23, 2007 1:58 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 2007 11:09 AM, Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The best known piece of software to successfully sneak out of a
> > classified project in a high security facility is Perl.  Opinions
> > differ on whether this was a good or bad thing. :-)
>
> IANAL....
>
> But Perl itself wasn't subject to state secrets that I know of.  I
> thought that Nigel's original question was one of state or trade
> secret protections removing the open source status of a particular
> piece of software.  My response would be:

Perl was developed as a reporting tool for use within a highly secure
project on machines that theoretically had no direct communication
with the outside world.

I agree that no classified information was part of Perl's source code.
 But what is interesting is that it managed to get off of those
machines.  Furthermore I'll note that its status was the same as any
open source software that manages to find itself in environments like
that on machines like that.

> 1)  I do not think that software restricted by state or trade secret
> classifications could be considered open source.

Not so fast.  There is plenty of open source encryption software that
by US state classification is not allowed to be exported to a specific
list of countries.  (Perhaps that is "was".  I haven't kept up on the
issue.)  But nobody argues that those pieces of software are not open
source.

> 2)  Of course, in any reasonable jurisdiction, it couldn't be publicly
> distributed so it doesn't matter (i.e. I don't think an entity can on
> one hand publish information and on the other hand claim that it is
> their secret, though this hasn't stopped the Bush Administration from
> trying this unsuccessfully-- jurisdictions which allow such
> secrets-based protections for publicly available works are not
> reasonable).

Heh.  I think you just called any jurisdiction with patents unreasonable. :-)

I'm not disagreeing, but the idea of a patent is that you publicly
disclose a secret and then it is yours.  Nobody else is allowed to use
it until your patent expires.

> 3)  I am not sure the label of "open source" pertains to any sort of
> private modification anyway.

If I hand you a piece of GPLed software that I've made a private
modification, it is open source software.

Cheers,
Ben