[TAG] Department of Homeland Security funding Open Source projects

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 06:20:33PM -0500, Adam S. Engel wrote:
> Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:
> 
>     All that aside: I believe that the DHS saw something in Open Source that
>     is of benefit to them, and are supporting it to gain a greater benefit;
>     a pretty straightforward transaction. It doesn't mean that the Open
>     Source community suddenly shares their moral position, or is responsible
>     for any of their actions - we're not even in the position of a man who
>     sells lunch to a known murderer, since we've purposely chosen to make
>     Linux universally available.
> 
>     That's how *rights* - as opposed to *privileges* - work.
> 
>  Point taken. As "Don Corleone" said, "Keep your friends close and your enemies
> closer."   I still think they're going to try to get whatever "free" labor they
> can -- or not free, depending on what they contribute -- but I hope the
> developers and programmers who deal with them  know when to draw the line in
> terms of DHS definition of "defense" and "security" as opposed to "offense" and
> "snooping" (i.e. the recent  NSA disclosures).

They would get the "free labor" - millions (my estimate) of man-hours of
it - just from downloading a Linux distro; they wouldn't need to support
Open Source projects for that. The thing that makes the difference is
that it's actually *Free* labor - and they can't do anything to change
that.

I also see you drawing a scenario that looks like jagged hell with
slippery slopes everywhere, but in actuality contains very little meat.
You seem to be postulating a situation in which the servants of
Satan^Wthe DHS plot in the dark of night to destroy the virtue of poor
and innocent idealistic young programmers, in order to break their pure
souls and consign them to a life of... oh, say, working at Micr0s0ft.

It ain't quite like that. :)

If the DHS wanted somebody to write them a proprietary program that,
e.g., calculated how to best poison baby seals and newborn puppies,
they'd hire a programmer who already had relevant experience - say,
someone who had been programming in Visual Basic or Access (and working
for the FDA) for a bunch of years. No muss, no fuss, no greasy
aftertaste; the job gets done the way they want it, and that's the whole
story.

Coming at it from the other end, "supporting Open Source projects" does
not mean dragging some long-haired Linux programmer - who may or may not
have a poster of Che Guevarra on his wall - in chains to a chair with
conveniently-arranged Klieg lights; it means that the DHS writes a check
and sends it to whoever is officially nominated as the project
treasurer, etc. If they're interested in the project going in a certain
direction, they - along with everyone else - are welcome to suggest it;
if the idea wins brainshare, then that's the way it'll go. If it
doesn't, then it won't. If the DHS wants to buy themselves a fork of
some FOSS project, then they get to deal with the Open Source licenses
under which all of the foregoing work was released - and if they wanted
a proprietary application based on that work, then they'd be up the
creek without a paddle in terms of legality, which is about the *last*
thing they want at this point (since breaking the law is something they 
save for larger targets - you *don't* just throw away that kind of
political capital.)

As I see it, it's a good thing all around.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *