I’ve been thinking about transparency and security in the public sector. Do you think all government software and platforms should be open source?
Some countries have already made progress in this area:
- Estonia: digital government services with open and auditable APIs.
- United Kingdom: several open source government projects and systems published on GitHub.
- France and Canada: policies encouraging the use of free and open source software in public agencies.
Possible benefits:
- Full transparency: anyone can audit the code, ensuring there is no corruption, hidden flaws, or unauthorized data collection.
- Enhanced security: public reviews help identify vulnerabilities quickly.
- Cost reduction: less dependency on private vendors and lower spending on proprietary licenses.
- Flexibility and innovation: public agencies can adapt systems to their needs without relying on external solutions.
Possible challenges:
- Maintenance and updating of complex systems.
- Protecting sensitive data without compromising citizen privacy.
- Political or bureaucratic resistance to opening the code.
Do you think this could be viable in the governments of your countries? How could we start making this a reality globally?
No. I think that there are some things that should very much not be open source or even have binaries publicly distributed, stuff like things like software used for some military purposes. You wouldn’t want to distribute it with abandon to the world any more than you would the weapons it drives or is used to create.
EDIT: Well, okay, technically being “open source” can just mean “if you have a legal right to the binaries, you get the source”, but I assume that that’s not what OP is going for here, that rather he’s interested in public distribution of the source.
Open source only requires source distribution with binary distribution, so the software can be open source and still not publicly distributed. It just means if its ever declassified, the source will be required to be distributed along with the software itself.
If the source isn’t publicly available, it’s not open source. It sounds like you’re suggesting that the software remain closed source until some later date where it then becomes open source.
That is simply not true. Go read a few open source licenses and see for yourself. They only require that the source code be distributed with copies of the software itself. The code is not required to be made available to the general public.
A few references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
https://opensource.org/osd
https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-source
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source
I haven’t read any open source licenses, so it’s possible you are correct in some technical sense, but that is not what people mean when they use the term open source.
Clearly the OP was using the common definition, or most of the post wouldn’t make any sense.
You don’t get to redefine open source. It’s always been about giving the source code to whoever you give the software.
Making it publicly available is an acceptable alternative to fulfill that obligation.
I’d say that kind of thing should fall under a label of being “Classified”. If it’s something like a recruitment page for the Army that shouldn’t need any kind of classification.