[PublicPolicy] Open Sourcing Government Code

Shimon Shore ShimonS at most.gov.il
Sun May 31 18:11:14 UTC 2020


Hello Mathias,

I appreciate all the well done materials. They are presented very well.

From what I have seen most of the material is about using Open Source and much less about donating.

I am specifically looking for arguments for governments to open source their code beyond the moral argument (ex. Public Money, Public Code). To play devil's advocate, the counter argument here is that since it is Public Money it must be used in ways that benefit the public. Creating repositories that no one looks at have no real value and is a waste of taxpayer money.

Regards,

Shimon


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Publicpolicy <publicpolicy-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf
> Of Matthias Kirschner
> Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2020 6:58 AM
> To: publicpolicy at lists.opensource.org
> Subject: Re: [PublicPolicy] Open Sourcing Government Code
> 
> Hello Shimon, Hello all,
> 
> Before I reply just a quick introduction as suggested by Patrick: My name is
> Matthias and I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe. I am involved
> in talking about software freedom to people from the public administration
> and politicians since 2004 and I am happy to have more exchange with other
> organisations around the world about this. If you are interested you can find
> more background in the link in my e-mail signature.
> 
> * Shimon Shore [2020-05-27 18:02 +0200]:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Why should a government open source their code?
> 
> That's a question we received a lot during the years. Meanwhile as a first
> step we often use this short 3:37 minute video on
> https://smex-
> ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=https%3a%2f%2fpublicc
> ode.eu%2f%23about&umid=ec7ea7f8-3050-4e04-9450-
> 44b56c8a6c19&auth=0552f576ef9cbf8536bffd6744e6f7ca40c5738b-
> d43d2c4873c4c3a634a606f4f27f5824f939b3f2 available in English, French,
> German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and we would love to have
> more languages. (The Open Letter there is also supported by many
> organisations whom I suspect here on the list https://smex-
> ctp.trendmicro.com:443/wis/clicktime/v1/query?url=https%3a%2f%2fpublicc
> ode.eu%2fopenletter%2f&umid=ec7ea7f8-3050-4e04-9450-
> 44b56c8a6c19&auth=0552f576ef9cbf8536bffd6744e6f7ca40c5738b-
> 3c67c56dfffc52c3211ccadea6e166c06cf63e7c .)
> 
> After this initial argumentation about the "why" we often use the
> brochure: https://fsfe.org/campaigns/publiccode/brochure (in English,
> German, Czech, and Brazilian Portuguese) providing some more background
> about software freedom, some examples, etc.
> 
> Hope this is helpful,
> 
> Best regards,
> Matthias
> 
> --
> Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
> Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
> Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030  |(fsfe.org/support)
> Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner)       Weblog k7r.eu/blog.html
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Publicpolicy mailing list
> Publicpolicy at lists.opensource.org
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/publicpolicy_lists.opensource.o
> rg


More information about the Publicpolicy mailing list