[FSF India] [NEWS] US PITAC Recos

[Raj Singh]

PITAC: U.S. Government Should Foster Development of Open Source/Free
Software

By Tony Stanco, Sep 14, 2000, 20 :44 UTC

Earlier this week the President's Information Technology Advisory
Committee (PITAC) issued its "Recommendations of the Panel on Open
Source Software For High End Computing."

This is a very important event for Free/Open Source software, because
it signals that the U.S. Federal government is finally ready to invest
heavily in free software. This, along with the interest shown by the
governments of China, Japan, Brazil and France to move away from
proprietary software for national security reasons, goes a long way to
legitimize free/open software development worldwide (as if that was an
issue any more). Still, the thought that the U.S. Federal government
is considering pumping potentially billions of dollars into free
software has to count for something.

The cover letter to the report says that PITAC "believes the open
source development model represents a viable strategy for producing
high quality software." A promising start.

The committee was charged with:

* 1. Charting a vision of how the Federal government can support the
developing Open Source software activities for high-end computing;

* 2. Defining a policy framework for accomplishing these goals;

* 3. Identifying policy, legal, and administrative barriers to the
widespread adoption of open source software efforts; and

* 4. Identifying potential roles for public institutions in Open
Source software economic models.

The report makes three recommendations:

1. The Federal government should aggressively (!) encourage the
development of Open Source software for high end computing;

2. A "level playing field" must be created within the government
procurement process to facilitate Open Source development; and

3. An analysis of Open Source licensing agreements is needed, with an
ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement for
Open Source software development.

So, there are some promising things that may come out of the report.

But there are also some troubling things that are apparent if you read
carefully between the lines.

1. How does a report to the President on Free/Open software
development not even mention Richard Stallman? The man who almost
single-handedly brought the world to this point. Without RMS standing
up to the ridicule and laughter from all quarters for 16 years as he
preached an alternative to proprietary software development, would the
world even know now there was an alternative to proprietary? That the
Presidential committee doesn't include RMS as a member puts the whole
report under a dark cloud, in my opinion. Also, when you look at who
is actually on the committee, you quickly see all the usual suspects,
so that uneasy feeling doesn't go away, but is actually reinforced.
When I spoke to RMS about his noninvolvement, he said he wasn't even
aware that the report was in the works.

2. This raises another question: who knew in the community that this
committee was working on the report? When working on a report about
the Internet-inspired democracy/meritocracy of free software
development, does it take that much imagination to use the same
Internet-inspired democracy/meritocracy to prepare the report? Where's
the community involvement in this report? After the initial euphoria
of what this report may have promised, one quickly fears that this
group simply misses the whole point of free software, even if they now
realize that something important is going on. Obviously, old biases
are hard to replace. This report comes from people who have the same,
old, corporate, command and control hierarchical mindset.

3. Did anyone notice recommendation No. 3. the ultimate goal of which
is "agreeing upon a single common licensing agreement"?

While there are some interesting things in this report, there are also
some dark clouds on the horizon. It is hard to say at this point
whether this is going to be ultimately good or bad for free software.
But it does show more community involvement is warranted to address
where powerful people are trying to take us.

See: http://www.ccic.gov/ac/pitac_ltr_sep11.html (given below)

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President's Information Technology Advisory Committee

September 11, 2000

Co-Chairs:

Raj Reddy
Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Members:

Eric A. Benhamou
Vinton Cerf
Ching-chih Chen
David Cooper
Steven D. Dorfman
David Dorman
Robert Ewald
Sherrilynne S. Fuller
Hector Garcia-Molina
Susan L. Graham
James N. Gray
W. Daniel Hillis
Robert E. Kahn
Ken Kennedy
John P. Miller
David C. Nagel
Edward H. Shortliffe
Larry Smarr
Joe F. Thompson
Leslie Vadasz
Andrew J. Viterbi
Steven J. Wallach

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) is
very pleased to submit the second report in the series of follow-ups
to our February 1999 report to the President, Information Technology
Research: Investing in Our Future. Open Source Software for High End
Computing highlights our recommendations for a research strategy that
uses open source software development as the new model for answering
America's high end computing software needs.

In our February 1999 report, we noted with concern a growing national
vulnerability based on the inadequacies of the current system to build
reliable and secure software while the diversity and sophistication of
the software base becomes increasingly pervasive in society. The PITAC
believes the open source development model represents a viable
strategy for producing high quality software through a mixture of
public, private, and academic partnerships. This open source approach
permits new software to be openly shared, possibly under certain
conditions determined by a licensing agreement, and allows users to
modify, study, or augment the software's functionality, and then
redistribute the modified software under similar licensing
restrictions. By its very nature, this approach offers government the
additional promise of leveraging its software research investments
with expertise in academia and the private sector.

In the attached report, we focus exclusively on software development
for high end computing (sometimes referred to as high-performance
computing or supercomputing) because of its critical importance to U. S.
national security and science and engineering research. Our 1999
analysis revealed that while there were a number of high end
applications ripe for exploration, the field was in need of
substantial innovations in application-development software,
algorithms, programming methods, component technologies, and
architecture.

The report makes three recommendations. First, the Federal government
should aggressively encourage the development of open source software
for high end computing. Adopting this recommendation will require a
technical assessment of the software needs for high end computing as
well as an innovative management plan and funding model for supporting
this development. Second, a "level playing field" must be created
within the government procurement process to facilitate open source
development. Third, an analysis of open source licensing agreements is
needed, with an ultimate goal of agreeing upon a single common
licensing agreement for open source software applications.

Exploring alternative software development models for high end
applications will allow the Nation to make significant progress
towards addressing the growing national need to ensure software
development practices and techniques which will result in reliable and
secure systems. We are encouraged to see some high end computing and
reliable software development research topics among the priorities in
your proposed FY2001 budget for Information Technology Research and
Development. However, we urge you to implement the strategy outlined
in our report in order to strengthen the effectiveness of federal
investments and policies in this arena.

Thank you for the continued opportunity to advise you on these and
other important issues for America's information technology-driven
economy.

Sincerely,

Raj Reddy, Ph.D.
PITAC, Co-Chair

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Ph.D.
PITAC, Co-Chair

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