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The White House just open sourced their first Github repo
- throwaway54-762 14y agoI've never seen the name "Obama" and "licensed under GPL v2 or later" in the same document before -- cool.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kellysutton 14y agoSuddenly, I became interested in politics again.
- izakage 14y agoI am curious about GPL compatibility in this situation. According to [1], software developed by US federal government cannot be licensed under the GPL since it is automatically in the public domain. However, the github repo readme makes the following claim: "The project utilizes code licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and therefore is licensed under GPL v2 or later." While I applaud this effort and wish to see more like it in the future, is there a possible issue with licensing here? [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GPLUSGov http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#GP...
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThis was exactly my question. How can they put limitations on public domain code?
- cdibona 14y agoSo obviously I don't work for the white house, but I suspect that since this code depends on bits of gpl'd code to function, they made the entire project licensed similarly. Also, it is not as simple as you think, government code isn't always pd. If written by a contractor, the contractor/contracting organization can decide to not release code/work to the public. Finally, if this code was written by Macon's team, and not by contractors, then you could maybe make an argument that the parts of the code that came from original gpl parts would be gpl'd, but not the code written by the wh team that doesn't depend on the gpl'd parts, as the code isn't distributed to end users the way the gpl mandates sharing. Anyhow, I'm trying to simplify a lot here, but thought I'd chime in.
- dllthomas 14y agoThey can't, but only part of the code is public domain. If you want to use the whole pile of it, you do so under the GPL - if you pick out the changes made by the govt, then you can apply those elsewhere.
- mmahemoff 14y agoSo effectively GPL imposes a dual (or multiple) license on the non-GPL part.
- dllthomas 14y agoInsofar as the non-GPL part is specific to the GPL code, yes. If you reimplement the GPL code under a different license, you could reuse the public domain bits. I expect in most cases, it wouldn't be terribly worthwhile.
- eco 14y agoSeems like it matches the situation of wanting to release your additions to a GPL codebase into the public domain. Doing that is perfectly fine[1]. It feels like a hole in the GPL for some reason though. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#RequiredToClaimCopyright https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#RequiredToClaimCop...
- intoit 14y agoMoving from MongoDB to MySQL. I never understood why people felt they need MongoDB/NoSQL for their projects. Does anyone have an example where it was really necessary/advantageous?
- dkhenry 14y agoAccording to the README they say preformance improvements with Mongo. The downside was having to port all the new features over to it. Personally I have used it to speed up development. It allows very fast iterations early on and integrates much more nicely with most languages then a SQL based solution. Also its a lot faster the MySQL.
- intoit 14y agoYeah, I think this was a case of the developers just wanting to try the latest thing without really understanding the impact or tradeoffs.
- jmikola 14y ago10gen sponsors development of a Drupal module, EntityFieldQuery[1], which aims to improve support for non-SQL databases. Although I'm unfamiliar with Drupal project layouts, I didn't find a reference to the module in the GitHub project, so I don't believe they were using it. That said, there are still challenges to making MongoDB play nicely with Drupal 7, but 10gen is aiming for better integration in version 8 (through the same sponsorship). 1. http://drupal.org/project/efq_views http://drupal.org/project/efq_views
- rburhum 14y agoI'll give you an example for CouchDB that, for the first time in my life, I saw an advantage: I created a webapp where a user can author a form (with several different kinds of fields), then it syncs with a mobile app that downloads the forms and allows for data collecting.CouchDB supports synchronizing with a server very easily and already has mobile support to. If/when the user changes the number of fields in the webapp, starting to collect that data makes it very trivial... no need to schema 'alter' statements in the server and synced back to the sqlite db in the phone. It all runs couch and it "just works". Mind you, I am very skeptical about NoSQL in general, but for this particular example, for the first time in my life, I saw a clear advantage.
- dkhenry 14y agoIt would be really cool if they let the devs use their public names and GitHub accounts to commit. As of right now it is WH-NewMedia, and there is no history. Makes me think this is a marketing excersize rather then a new leaf in federal software development.
- zacharycohn 14y agoI doubt it's a marketing exercise. There are people who really are trying to change things from inside. It takes time, and it takes a lot of small steps. Why don't you contact them and encourage them to use individual public names?
- dkhenry 14y agoI don't doubt there are people on the inside trying to change things, and I applaud their efforts, but I would hate to see their efforts hijacked by the political arm thinking they can sell us a bill of goods and get a bunch of free press.
- nhebb 14y agoI would believe that more if there were a single White House petition that resulted in action. Even their SOPA petition response was pretty murky.
- nowarninglabel 14y agoWhat does whether or not a petition is responded to have to do with open-sourcing code in a White House repo? Your complaint is like if Mac open sourced a component of OS X and you went on a rant about them not moving work out of abusive factories in China due to a petition.
- kennywinker 14y agoTrue, but it's hard to disentangle the product from the thing that produced it. If Apple open sourced a product, I would fully expect to see criticism of their policies (probably around openness and and transparency, rather than labour) in any collective reaction.
- daenz 14y agoAnd, in the spirit of the project, they'll reject all pull requests with a patronizing response about the way things are.[1][2] 1. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regulate-marijuana-manner-similar-alcohol/y8l45gb1 https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legalize-and-regul... 2. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-use-its-monstrous-budget-fund-more-sophisticated-less-intrusive-counter-terrorism/c7L94bFB?utm_source=wethepeople&utm_medium=response&utm_campaign=tsa https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/abolish-tsa-and-us...
- tokenizer 14y agoHowever, the point about the brain is accurate. While this is purely my own experience, two people I've known, have developed schizophrenia in their early twenties (when the onset usually occurs) and both had smoked pot heavily in their teens. I and many more friends however, have and continue to smoke pot with no ill effects save short term memory. Link: http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/pediatrics/2010-11-20-teendrugs22_ST_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/pediatrics/2... However, repeated studies and surveys show that it is easier for teens to get certain drugs, including pot, than it is for them to get cigarettes or alcohol. This make sense considering someone mandated by law to check for id is selling it to them, oppose to another teen selling them unchecked, non taxed pot without doing so. Link: http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/28/study-says-its-easier-for-teens-to-buy-marijuana-than-beer/ http://blog.norml.org/2009/08/28/study-says-its-easier-for-t... While this thread may be about the white house's code base, hear this; don't put your github account near this. You may think it could be harmless, but they could be collecting your account names. After all we are all just dangerous computer hackers! Link: http://www.channel4.com/news/hackers-are-more-dangerous-than-al-qaeda-right-now http://www.channel4.com/news/hackers-are-more-dangerous-than... Disclaimer: Just my opinion.
- sneak 14y agoThis is not about marijuana. It's about the government ignoring high-signatory-count petitions. Stop with the red herring, please.
- kyebosh 14y agoCertainly an interesting microcosm of a type of democracy... I wonder how feasible this kind of model would be for actual policy making.
- csense 14y agoThe more influential the channel gets, the harder people will try to game the system to push their own agenda. I.e. fake or hacked registrations, buying signatures, or trying to promote comments favorable to your point of view while burying opposing ones. Right now the influence of this app is zero, so we don't have these problems. It's just a marketing dog-and-pony show where they can say "Look we're actually responding to people's questions" but the answers are extremely vague nothings and you have no idea if the President / Cabinet / anyone with real authority even reads the petitions that have 6- or 7-digit signature counts, let alone acting on them.
- slurgfest 14y agoOh I don't know, it isn't much different from a system which analyzes emails to see what motivated constituents with email are saying - it's just public. I think it's an interesting experiment and a starting point. I don't think it is ever wrong in a democracy to give people a way of publicizing a message or to give elected officials visibility into relevant things people are saying publicly. I don't know where the high expectations came from. But I might speculate that many people are starting from dislike of the President's policies and then from there tarring the website, rather than actually responding directly to the idea of the website.
- klearvue 14y agoWhile this is the first with respect to releasing on Github, in April 2010 White House also released 2 open source Drupal modules (for Akamai integration and another one).
- ejesse 14y agoNow if we could just get THOMAS into Github so we can upgrade that beast...
- kanzure 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOMAS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THOMAS So who developed THOMAS?
- ejesse 14y agoI would presume Congressional IT? No idea. Good question.
- sp332 14y agoI know this is late but I just got an email back from "O'Keeffe, Hope loke@loc.gov" that says it's based on a "commercial system" that is "out of support" and not available.
- sp332 14y agoHey I know this is late but I just got an email back from "O'Keeffe, Hope loke@loc.gov" that just says it's based on a commercial system that is "out of support" and not available.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sneak 14y agoWho cares? This is boring code. Save all the "it portends an open government!" handwaving for once the Obama admin does something _actually_ meaningful (in a positive way - starting a new war doesn't count). Seriously. Much ado about a Drupal module that is used for people to petition the government to be patronized and ignored.
- mindslight 14y agoI'm pretty excited at the prospect of a FUSE implementation of /dev/null-as-a-service. But seriously, what'd you expect? The financial industry lost its place as the American poster boy, so the politicians needed something new with which to pretend they're relevant. Besides, don't be such a buzz kill. Everyone gets laid at the Whitehouse. Everyone.
- waterside81 14y agoThat's a pretty cynical way of viewing things. Take a look at the big picture: the highest office in the land (world?) is doing what we here on HN do: push public code, accept feedback, leverage open source etc. It's a fantastic start towards a new paradigm of open source code in public places. This should be celebrated; a new generation of people are running things now. It can only get better.
- nirvana 14y agoYou just said "a fantastic start towards a new paradigm" about something that happened 3.5 years into a 4 year presidential term, with an election coming up. I don't think a new generation is running things. That kennedy camelot spin was used in 2008, but it is 2012 now, and I don't see any evidence to support it. (EG: Pick your issue, Marijuana dispensaries are getting raided, the PATRIOT act has been expanded, the Afghan war is expanded, the TSA is now molesting and taking nude images of travelers, etc.)
- sneak 14y agoThank you for doing exactly what I suggested that you not.
- deleted 14y ago
- arctangent 14y agoHere in the UK, the Government Digital Service [1] are doing much the same thing. They're building a single site for all government services and publishing all their code on GitHub. [1] http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
- kennywinker 14y agoFinally I can sass the whitehouse using github issues! https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/issues/2 https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/issues/2
- rauljara 14y agoLet's say you were a web developer hired to design some part of Apple's website, and by some miracle Apple let you open source your code. You, as a web developer, have no special way to contact or pass information on to Tim Cook, or any other top Apple executive. Would you appreciate sassy comments about Foxconn in your repository's pull requests?
- kennywinker 14y agoWell, being that I would probably agree wholeheartedly with the sassy comment, I wouldn't mind someone using the release as a platform for their political expression. But that's me. In this case the POINT of the software was supposed to be political expression, so it doesn't seem that out of place to me.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- unconed 14y agoSeeing that I would be a web developer designing real products for the real world, yes, I would appreciate being exposed to the grander political and social context of my work, because nothing is created in a vacuum, and anything involving a group of people in public becomes political sooner than later anyway.
- TallGuyShort 14y agoConsidering how insulting it is that the README parades this project as evidence of how radically transparent the administration is, I think it ought to be highly appreciated.
- Myrmornis 14y agoOpening issue #2 was not a wise or helpful act. This initiative should be encouraged; presumably the government will be more enthusiastic about continuing the experiment if they do not receive the impression that the community of open source developers are childish and counter-productive.
- ef4 14y ago> "President Obama is committed to creating the most open and participatory government in our nation’s history" I'll believe that when his administration stops being one of the most secretive and most aggressive prosecutors of whistleblowers in recent history. Sources: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_whistleblowers/ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/obamas_unprecedented_war_on_... http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistleblowers-stuxnet-leaks-drones http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/obamas-whistlebl... http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_consensus_obama_aping_bush_on_state_secrets.php/ http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/expert_con... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/politics/new-rules-to-curb-leaks-and-catch-leakers.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/us/politics/new-rules-to-c... http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_most_transparent_administration_ever%E2%84%A2/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/30/the_most_transparent_adminis... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/government-documents-in-plain-sight-but-still-classified.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/government-documents-i...
- snowwrestler 14y agoJust want to point out that this is not the first code contributed to open source from the WhiteHouse.gov project. Several of the Drupal modules developed for the site were made available to the community on Drupal.org not long after the new site launched. Some examples (may not be all of them): http://drupal.org/project/govdelivery http://drupal.org/project/govdelivery http://drupal.org/project/akamai http://drupal.org/project/akamai http://drupal.org/project/context_http_headers http://drupal.org/project/context_http_headers http://drupal.org/project/node_embed http://drupal.org/project/node_embed Actually it strikes me as a little strange that this code is on Github since Drupal.org has an entire section devoted to Drupal "distributions", which is what this appears to be. I mean, is the White House tech office moving to a full open source development model? Are they planning to appoint volunteer maintainers and accept pull requests? I sort of doubt it.
- mikey_p 14y agoAnd specifically it includes a drupal-org.make file which is a manifest for the Drupal.org packaging system which bundles up this profile, all of it's dependencies, and Drupal core into a single download. Perhaps they are planning to put it there, or just decided to mirror it on Github for now. Also FWIW, the petition namespace on d.o is already occupied, perhaps that is blocking the release on d.o?
- sprice 14y agoA drupal-org.make file, like any .make file that the Drupal tool Drush uses, is independent of the Drupal.org packaging system. There's a lot of pressure from within the Drupal community to host all Drupal contrib modules, themes, and distributions on drupal.org but I don't see anything wrong with a distribution being hosted on GitHub. It certainly brings more visibility to the project from developers outside of the "Drupal Island".
- snowwrestler 14y agoIt does, which might have been part of the reason they did it this way. Github is increasingly "the place to be" for open source projects, so the White House probably wants to get involved there too. (I don't mean this cynically BTW--I believe they honestly are trying to move the government more toward open source.) And a lot of Drupal developers do use Github for their own work. On the other hand when they go to check out distribution options for a new project, I bet they start on Drupal.org. It's just so convenient, and like you say, there's a strong norm within the community to put everything there. Even the few "commercial" distributions can be found there. I assume this work will show up there at some point as well.
- justinph 14y agoNeat. Too bad it's drupal, rendering it totally useless to people with actual taste or skill.
- ericdykstra 14y agoGreat! Now if we can just get some transparency into issues that matter.
- rparet 14y agoInteresting case giving up MongoDB because of the complexity of adapting another application to use it. I wonder if this is a good use case for something like http://www.nuodb.com/ http://www.nuodb.com/
- ceol 14y agoIgnoring all the snarky comments about how the current administration has ignored every online petition so far, this is really cool. Everyone now has a chance to have their name attached to an official government project!
- jgoney 14y agoI'm a little disappointed; I wouldn't have thought this community to be so cynical and partisan. Can't we all just get along?
- stephenhandley 14y ago$markup .= 'You've got my vote, Little Face Mitt.';
- robgolding 14y agoCheck out the first commit to this project: https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/commit/fcb103e966f777c73d82e99fb4592df386d7aaef https://github.com/WhiteHouse/petition/commit/fcb103e966f777...
- thinkingisfun 14y agoHere's the quote I was looking for. "A totalitarian state simply enunciates official doctrine -- clearly, explicitly. Internally, one can think what one likes, but one can only express opposition at one's peril. In a democratic system of propaganda no one is punished (in theory) for objecting to official dogma. In fact, dissidence is encouraged. What this system attempts to do is to fix the limits of possible thought: supporters of official doctrine at one end, and the critics -- vigorous, courageous, and much admired for their independence of judgment -- at the other. The hawks and the doves. But we discover that all share certain tacit assumptions, and that it is these assumptions that are really crucial. No doubt a propaganda system is more effective when its doctrines are insinuated rather than asserted, when it sets the bounds for possible thought rather than simply imposing a clear and easily identifiable doctrine that one must parrot -- or suffer the consequences. The more vigorous the debate, the more effectively the basic doctrines of the propaganda system, tacitly assumed on all sides, are instilled. Hence the elaborate pretense that the press is a critical dissenting force -- maybe even too critical for the health of democracy -- when in fact it is almost entirely subservient to the basic principles of the ideological system: in this case, the principle of the right of intervention, the unique right of the United States to serve as global judge and executioner. It is quite a marvelous system of indoctrination." -- Noam Chomsky, "Language and Responsibility" (1977) But of course, that was then, today it's totally different, right? Right.