Email Comment: Javascript source code should be released

[OMBPublicComments]

[Email Comment, received on 4/16/2016, at 10:56AM ET]

Hello,

Thanks for taking the initiative to revise the US Federal Source Code Policy.

As the software has been paid for by the public through taxation, the software should be called free software as per the definition found at the Free Software Foundation, https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.

I strongly reccomend that all the custom code the government is producing should be free to be ethically consistent.

Free documentation for these source code projects should also be included in the policy, or the software is devalued considerably. Manuals are an intimate part of a software project.

The US government needs to address its contradictory stance of recommending proprietary software to be used, including non-free Javasript on its websites. A copyright notice needs to be explicitly stated on Javascript files from each website page. If it is not there, it is automatically considered proprietary. This contradicts your initiative.

Minified Javascript code is not the real source code. Please make a distinction and rule that the original javascript source code should be released.

Javascript needs to be functional in a free browser where source code is available with a Free Software license to level the playing field such as the GNU browserIceCat .

Such a policy will be a great stimulus to the creation of new works and encourage best practises to improve overall application security.

Thanks for your time,
Gerold Rupprecht