White House Source Code Policy a Big Win for Open Government | Hacker News Reader

White House Source Code Policy a Big Win for Open Government

eff.org

133 pointsDiabloD314 comments

I'd encourage you all to read the draft source code policy (https://sourcecode.cio.gov/) and consider commenting on it or responding to existing comments yourself (due by Monday night at midnight Eastern U.S. time): https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/issues

This is an unusually direct opportunity to share your expertise to help the entire U.S. federal government do a better job of building software.

This is a great step in the right direction!

I did a request for Chicago's $100M ticketing system's code - written by IBM - and they're acting very, very slowly to further respond. More so than usual. Hopefully this sort of work helps out :). I feel like I should probably contact EFF after seeing this..

What particular project are you referring to? That's an awfully large contract. I'd like to know what the outcome is of your work.

It's called CANVAS. I saw some very interesting things in that contract - for example, 20M of that included a subcontract for paper. It's relatively understandable, but it's pretty clear that someone at an obscure, difficult to research company got a very pretty penny for it.

And gladly - I'll try to keep you updated.

I wonder if it is going to wind up applying to voting machines or if they're somehow going to be "loopholed"

I'd prefer that those machines could have their code audited.

Likely not. In this country the states run the elections, not the federal government.

If you want this in your state, push them (that is, your state senators and state legislature) to adopt a similar policy at the state level.

The original open source in voting: pen and paper, mechanical levers.

Really, open source software isn't good enough for voting machines. We need open source firmware and hardware. And there even needs to be a spec, with test cases, on how to network everything if it's indeed going to get networked. The entire voting ecosystem is questionable without complete transparency.

This is a proposed policy. The original title is a little misleading.

Good to see the government considering steps like this. Still, the system needs a major upgrade of tech understanding if we're to really introduce better tech within government. We can begin by electing people who understand technology.

Coding convention for WhiteHouse Android app is abysmal ;)

https://github.com/WhiteHouse/wh-app-android/blob/master/app...

    public
    boolean checkNetworkElseFail()
    {

    public
    Tracker getTracker()
    {

etc. Who does that?? And that's despite the fact that

"Contributers [sic] are expected to adhere to the official Android Code Style Guidelines." ;)

>>Who does that?

You mean the indentation style? The K&R vs ANSI/Allman thing?

That argument started well before java, and continues. I would guess you're seeing it there because whoever wrote it had previously been a C++ developer. Inertia. GNU's classpath, for example, is indented this way...same thing, inertia. Easy enough to batch reformat though.

I was referring to putting visibility modifier in its own line.

It's handy if you're looking for the methods definition using a regex. Instead of doing something like (in pseudo-regex):

    $[public|private|whatever-else-can-behere](FUNCTION_YOURE_LOOKING_FOR)

you can do a slightly simpler

    $(FUNCTION_YOURE_LOOKING_FOR)

Obviously your code editor/IDE should handle that, but maybe if you wanted to whip up a quick script to something a little odd, it'd be quite handy to have the function name on a separate line.

Well, that's the first time I see such convention. And your argument doesn't quite hold water to me. They put the visibility modifier in its own line, not the function name. It's still next to the return type (or void). So it would still beat your regex. Plus, I'm not exactly sure if any Android devs snap out little regex-based scripts for refactoring or whatnot :) I'm sure it's far from unusual in dynamic languages, but looks like a great YAGNI in this case. I'm not hating it, all I'm saying is it's odd :)

You're completely right, it's odd. Also I didn't realise that the return type was also on the same line as the function name, in which case, even more odd.

I think the idea dates back to early C. I've definitely seen C code with the return type on a separate line.

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