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Comment by jerrya | Hacker News Reader

If the source code is so terrible, and if we still need to rely on it, is it really such a good idea to release it as open source? How will that help? Will it make healthcare.gov more reliable? More secure? Less vulnerable? Faster?

Perhaps the source code should be audited, if only to figure out what happened to the $600,000,000, but it's not clear that that requires open sourcing the code.

Now, the taxpayers purchased the codebase and the codebase could help states that did not offer a state marketplace create one. So I am very supportive of the idea of making it available to various states. But until the thing is running relatively smoothly, I don't see open sourcing it as doing anything but delaying the rollout and making it less reliable and less secure.

Update: it turns out John Oliver has taken a look at the code: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2Qt...

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Healthcare.gov is far more complex than a repo, which is why I care more about the process. The data integration process is/was staggering, with 55 contractors/agencies involved (according to the NYT). That screams trouble all over it, especially with government contractor reflexes.

Was this achievable in the given time? If so, what was the plan to get there? If not, how should it have been managed?

Oh it's almost certainly guaranteed to fail. Also from the nytimes:

One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.

In comparison:

  Windows 95 had 15 million lines of code.
  Windows 98, 18 million
  Windows XP, 35 million

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/technology/27soft.html

Luckily for all of us they have about 8 weeks.

We don't have to open source everyone source code. Sure it's nice to have everyone to audit. But how many of us here have the time and even the energy to read others' source code. Plus, the system is not even installable. It's like telling Google open source their entire search engine.

We should however demand an audit to be done and the result to be published.

Government source code should be open source by default.

They should have to make the case to keep it closed, not the other way around.

See my other comments down there. In any case, not every thing everyone does should be open sourced. There are things you just have to hire smart people to do the jobs right and open source does not solve issues immediately.

It's not a matter of it solving issues. It's a matter of it belonging to the public.

Then surely we can open source F16 source code and publish it on Github.

That has miltitary secrets that you wouldn't want other govt to know and be able to utilize in their own development of fighter jets.

In the case of web code, there's nothing's new and innovative about the software that is unknown by existing developers. There is the potential for exploits but open source can help plug up those holes by allowing the community to assist in the process.

Sure, dumping the supposed "500 million" lines of code all at once would make it hard to review but they could release one compinent at a time over several months/years and vow to release all future code.

On a side note, wouldn't reviewing and repairing govt software be an excellent teaching tool for schools? How proud would a child be to have their code fix be accepted into production?

Great point, if something like this is done and students gets into learning and contributing to open source it is going to have a tremendous improvement on the quality of software.

I don't follow. This is a public service, with public data serving the public. There's nothing secret here. If anything should be public it's this.

It needs to be made public period. It's our money, it's our code, it's our data being handled by this code. Does anyone seriously trust the government with their data enough to not want this code public?

So we know what our tax dollars were spent on, and how our private information is being handled and potentially not well protected. This code needs a public audit.

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