my take on
gist.github.com/rmehta/e13c4…
great read, by the way.
did you know the gov of india has openforge? back when there was a government change, the usual things happened: the new government shuffled departments, brought the brightest minds together, and announced the policy of adoption of open-source software.
if we look at oss, it has far more advantages than disadvantages. the only major cons i see are two things:
1. people think that if we make it public, it is easier to exploit because if you can't see it, it is likely harder to expoloit. vulnerabilities will be found, but hiding the code makes it harder.(my take on recent
cal.com conversion to close source and their justification)
2.anyone can copy the code.
let's discuss the points raised by the gist first.
1.oss helps avoid reinventing the wheel every time. because the code is already public, any relevant authority can just fork it, customize it according to their needs, and be on their way.
2.engaging a community: the government of a nation has a near-infinite number of resources, but they also have an equal number of tasks or things to manage. emphasis on the amount of resources a gov possesses compared to an average person.
“The biggest problem here is that these companies may not want to engage a community, because if the knowledge goes out, then the commercial potential of a project will come down.”
this is another disadvantage i discussed earlier.
3. open data: being open-source is good, but the relevant data should also be open-source. one point from the gist i still find relatable:
“One example is Public Transport data. There is a well-accepted standard for publishing Public Transport schedules (GTFS), but there is almost no government body in India that publishes data in GTFS, even though a private company like Google can provide accurate data via GoogleMaps”
a year or two back, a friend wanted to build a transport-related application. but we couldn't find the bus routes. where is the data? where is the api for it?
how is this possible? if i open google maps, i can see exactly when a bus is going to arrive or at which station or stop it will be at a given time. but otherwise, we can't find the data.
4.don't reinvent: the writer mentions,
“government is contemplating building a GitHub / Sourceforge like repository that will host all applications that will be built under this initiative”
well, in march 2017, the government launched openforge which is based on the tuleap suite.
similar question as theirs: "why not use GitHub. Or better, why not let each organization publish on its own, be it GitHub, or their self-hosted GitLab instance?"
there is another issue with forcing centralized concepts. although it is good for the public to find things easily in one place but:
“By creating this “centralized” repository, we might see each organization mandated to publish a X number of repositories, no matter how meaningless. It might be a better idea to put across a set of publishing standards for such software and let different organizations host it wherever they like. This will encourage diversity in platforms and that itself leads to much better software being built.”
5.last but not least.
looking back, looking ahead:
at that time:
“So far the government has a mixed record of implementing large IT projects and shockingly poor record when it comes to Open Source software, keeping aside Free Software for a moment. The Government’s nodal agency, the National Resource Center for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) and the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) have been publishing Free and Open Source softwares for a while, but one can neither find the repositories, nor the products, nor the documentation. Their flagship BOSS Linux Distribution is so popular that the last question on its forum is from 2010 and if you want to find the source of their cloud computing project (MEGHDOOT), then you might have to file a Right-to-Information application.”
now let's cover the ground left open from 2016 to today.
if we check the official openforge website, it has great stats, e.g., 4000 projects. now let's see those projects.
i see the list. i saw a few recent ones and some old ones dating back to 2016.
i see very few or almost no git-tracked files (not to be confused with "files," which on openforge means file releases) in them. they are all empty. i don't understand; is this some type of empty graveyard?
when i sorted from oldest to newest, i got excited because in 2016 it had many projects, but in most of them, i can't find a single file.
and i still agree with the point raised by the gist. if you try to search for government of india open-source orgs and take a look at all the github orgs, you can see the reality.
let me tell you what you will find:
no public repos.
1 or 2 repos from a decade ago
1 or 2 recent repos
again, i will raise the issue: why are we not open-sourcing things? what do we fear?
let's start with me. i have not open-sourced many things because i believe they are not up to standard or they are meaningless. and hey, i am not the government; i am still learning, and i don't know all the coding standards.