[PublicPolicy] Open Source Publishing Survey

[Shimon Shore]

I agree with your points.

What we are doing now is surveying various stakeholders to prove it with data so that they have hard data to back decisions that are made.

Thank you.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bastien Guerry <bastien.guerry at data.gouv.fr>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2020 8:34 AM
> To: Shimon Shore <ShimonS at most.gov.il>
> Cc: publicpolicy at lists.opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [PublicPolicy] Open Source Publishing Survey
> 
> Hi Shimon,
> 
> Shimon Shore <ShimonS at most.gov.il> writes:
> 
> > We want to do a survey within the Israel Government IT departments as
> > to attitudes toward publishing code to Open Source and what prevents
> > them from publishing.
> >
> > Have you ever done such a survey?
> 
> in France, we did not conduct such a survey but that's a good idea, and we
> could certainly learn a lot from your initiative.
> 
> > Anything that would help us to put a survey together would be
> > appreciated, including any survey results you may have.
> 
> From my own experience (i.e. direct discussions with public agencies) here
> are the main blockers:
> 
> - A fear that sharing the code will allow anyone to modify the system
>   the code is used for.
> 
> - A fear that sharing the code will allow anyone to modify the code
>   itself (as if github.com was some sort of Wikipedia for code.)
> 
> - A general fear that "sharing" equals "loss of control".
> 
> - Security concerns: showing the code is exposing flaws.
> 
> - "Dignity" concerns: showing the code is showing how bad you are at
>   writing it.
> 
> - A variant of the above is to wait for the code to be ready: "Let us
>   finish writing the documentation and then we'll share the code." Of
>   course, nothing happens in these cases.
> 
> - Legal concerns: showing the code will perhaps expose some copyright
>   infringement issues.
> 
> - "Loss of opportunity" concerns: if I share the code, someone will
>   perhaps reuse it and make money out of it.  It is very difficult to
>   explain that this may lead to a virtuous circle, it is often simply
>   perceived as "wrong".
> 
> - Lack of know-what on the free software licences and know-how on how
>   to publish code.
> 
> - Lack of clear positive incentives for doing so.
> 
> That's what comes at the top of my head right now.
> 
> I hope this is somehow useful.
> 
> --
>  Bastien Guerry