Re: slightly off-topic: support open source for publically-funded research

[glen e. p. ropella]

At 09:15 PM 11/16/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> [... I have only posted this follow-up to swarm-modelling, since it's
> less off-topic than for swarm-support.  ;-) A quick disclaimer (which
> I should appended before): my first post of the petition and my
> subsequent comments are my personal opinions only and do not
> necessarily reflect the opinions of the board of the Swarm Development
> Group, of which I am a member, or of my employer, the University of
> California, Berkeley...  There, I feel better now ;-)]

[grin]  How's this... any organization that dares to employ me
risks having me state things they don't agree with... and also
risks the case where I fail to state that my opinions don't
match theirs.

> You have a point, and purely as a legal issue, it would be hard to
> argue that US taxes should be spent *directly* on software that would
> be useful to other countries.  However, as a matter of empirical fact,
> there is already a tradition of this in US research (as you rightly
> point out there is an analogue with "published research", but there
> are more direct examples of software, which I list below).  Also in a
> purely economic sense it can make sense to make the code available to
> a wider audience, since modifications made by non-US citizens are
> required to be contributed back (at least if a strong `copyleft'
> license like the GPL is used).  Examples:

Yep.  I didn't intend to say that contributing taxpayer's monies
to causes those taxpayers didn't explicitly agree to doesn't happen.
As you point out, it happens all the time... even with more mundane
things like giving away excess wheat (that we forced our country
to produce in the first place [grin]).

My statement was that it makes no sense to *force* individual
projects to do this.  And, in fact, it could be deemed
unconstitutional to adopt it as policy.  Adopting a case-by-case
handling of whether or not the production should be donated
is probably the only constitutionally viable decision process.


> So even without invoking moral arguments like "it's the right thing to
> do", or that "science is a global enterprise" (both of which I happen
> to believe), it's possible to build a case that publically-funded
> research made available to all (including non-US citizens) via open
> source licenses, is ultimately completely in the US national interest.

Again, I agree that it is in the US interest to publish open
source.  However, that is irrelevant to the issue of the mis-use
of taxpayer money.

> One of my fears in this post-September 11 world the US will start to
> retreat from it's existing commitment to free and unfettered global
> scientific information sharing, and start to define "national
> interest" a lot more narrowly than in the past.  It's an
> understandable, if unfortunate situation.

I don't have this fear at all.  There are enough subcultures
and splinter groups in this country to ensure that free and
unfettered information sharing will continue, though possibly
at great cost and lowered quality, especially now that the
disgusting and embarrassing "Patriot Act" has been signed into law.

Even in the case that the government of the US continues its current
trend towards homogenization, the intellectual assets of the US
will find a way to continue to do what they do, either by leaving
the country or subverting that trend.

> But, on balance, I think the goal of making it the "default" mode for
> software developed by public money for scientific purposes (rather
> than the existing "default" that it be closed or proprietary) is a
> laudable one.

Agreed.  I might sign the petition if it said this explicitly.

> I agree with Marcus' point here.

Of course!  That's because he's using rhetorical judo.
The devil is in the details of the agreement, though.

>   It's not good enough (at least with
> the state of the art in agent simulation) to produce the spec. and not
> the code.  If everybody used the software equivalent of the "Tektronix
> XYZ oscilloscope", then it might be, but we're not there yet.
> (Incidentally the goal of being able to have a "higher-level"
> specification is a laudable goal, the agent simulation equivalent of
> Donald Knuth's "literate programming" idea, "cweb", comes to mind).
>
> Even without the "code is the specification" equivalance argument, the
> software reuse argument, is probably even stronger.  The ability for
> other universities and researchers to re-use other tools could
> ultimately save the taxpayers many more dollars.

Again, I'm not arguing that we produce a spec without the
code.  I'm only arguing that we produce a non-code spec of
some kind.  Forcing researchers to publish the code encourages
Bad Behavior by misleading some people into thinking that
the code *is* the only spec that's required, which is never
the case.

And this is argued for by all the arguments for software reuse.
And it is argued for by the more relevant arguments of
good experimental practice.  We want to get to the point where
we can say we're using the "Tektronix XYZ", instead of having
to say, RTFSC; because it is at that point where software is
providing leverage instead of obstruction to the research.

The only way we'll get to that point is by encouraging a
non-source-code specification.  And *forcing* researchers to
publish their code could be sending the absolute wrong
message.  In a weaker sense, even being a fanatical open
source advocate can send the wrong message.  I find that
people understand the problem better when I say that I
DON'T WANT TO read the source code... I'd rather have
someone explain it to me.  Maybe it's because I'm lazy [grin]...
or maybe it's because abstraction is the point of this game.


=><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><==><=
The competent hawk hides its claws.       =><=        Hail Eris!
glen e. p. ropella   =><=   H:831.335.4950  =><=  C:650.776.4616



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