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Comment by cjjuice | Hacker News Reader

I am really impressed with 18F and how the federal government has really stepped up their game on the digital/open source front.

It does make me wonder though if the usage rights of these projects should be restricted to use by US taxpayers though since that is who is ultimately paying for this work.

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You could say the same thing about the UK government's equivalent, which I would argue is somewhat of an influence on 18F (though I'm not an insider). They actively open source their work, this being a great example of it: https://github.com/alphagov

I don't think that 18F and US taxpayers lose out on anything by open sourcing this. It builds a lot of good will and they are probably using systems that have been contributed to by others as well.

It goes further than just things developed by GDS themselves, all government projects for which GDS is responsible (i.e. they conduct audits and assessments at alpha, beta and live) are also open source. Here's one I worked on: https://github.com/dvsa/mot

Things generally don't have to be open source until you get to your beta assessment, as the alpha assessment is really just checking that you have a clear plan for getting to beta and they agree with your approach, so you don't fail for not being open source at this stage. The project I'm working on currently (an app to let companies wishing to perform road works see all road works being performed across the country, hopefully preventing things like two different companies digging up and resurfacing the road in a short space of time, etc.) is about to hit beta so will be open-sourced shortly

I like some of the NHS Digital work too. They have some interesting blogs, eg this: https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/icons-a...

Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about this.

US taxpayers also have a high chance of benefiting from the work of non-US taxpayers who use this to reduce their expenses. Much like I benefit from workplaces that aren't mine offering sick days - fewer sick people working in the world means _I_ get sick less. Fewer people spending money recreating open work means they can spend that money elsewhere (or reduce the costs of what they do) and those network effects might well give me a benefit.

Maybe we can also only allow taxpayers to walk on sidewalks or drive on roads /s

Here is the legal requirement for this kinda stuff: https://www.usa.gov/government-works

It's a fork of https://github.com/impallari/Libre-Franklin so it'd be a bit against the spirit of things (if even legally permitted) to relicense it to a non-free license. It'd also limit the US taxpayers who wanted to use it in ways that required the full freedom to share with not US taxpayers.

What would be the benefit of that sort of restriction?

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