Posted on 11/05/2013 10:35:27 AM PST by GrandJediMasterYoda
Obama Administration Uses Pirated Code on Healthcare.gov
The new Obamacare website Healthcare.gov has had its fair share of problems over the past weeks, and the trouble continues.
As it turns out, the Government website uses the open source software DataTables, which is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library.
While using open-source software is fine, the makers of Healthcare.gov decided to blatantly remove all references to its owners or the original copyright license.
In other words, they simply took the open-source software and are passing it off as their own, a clear violation of the GPL v2 and BSD (3-point) licenses DataTables uses.
For a comparison, here is the original DataTables file and this is how it looks on Healthcare.gov.
(Excerpt) Read more at torrentfreak.com ...
That was my question. We paid $600M+ to a company that click and pasted code as part of their product? Really?
LOL!!!
Looks like the gov version has already been “fixed” to include the references to its rightful owners.
Sorry, barn door closed after horses departed.
[just use the links rather than the sample code in the article]
You sir, should use that as a tagline. That's funny. I don't care who you are.
The copyright heading is not the issue, it's removing the license header. One of the specific things the GPLv2 and BSD licenses mandate is that you must always retain the license header if you use or derive from the object under license.
That's one of the beauties of the GPL license, if you like open source - once something is released under GPL license, it can never be "un-licensed" and all derived work will also automatically become GPL licensed. It's free, open source. The price is that whatever you create using it also has to be free, open source.
It's a moot point though, as it seems they updated the JS file in question on healthcare.gov to now include the full license header.
I was going with POS-DIC-ATOR.
No kidding. I wouldn't want my name found under all that rubble.
So...liars steal, also. Who woulda thought?????
code we much
Impostor, more like it.
Can we report them to the Business Software Alliance and collect the reward?
Indeed.
It’s embarrassing to see though. Any developer worth their salt should know these things. Especially in this day and age where open-source components are so ubiquitous, especially in web development. And anyone developing a public site should (and usually does) have a license compliance step in their architecture cycle. If not for the fact that open source advocates and non-profits like the BSD and Free Software (GNU) foundations have actually started to enforce and go after companies that violate software under their open source licenses.
Makes me wonder what kind of no-bid clowns they got to develop this. But I guess we know that already...
It’s a negligible difference for a single user loading a page, sure. However, consider tens of thousands of people all tacking on unnecessary bandwidth for a very in-demand website, and it may start to add up.
“Obama is both the POTUS and a DICTATOR. I suggest we simply call him the POTATOR.”
LOL! That’s the first good laugh I’ve had all day.
“... all derived work automatically becomes GPL licensed.
It’s free, open source...”
-
Does that make healthcare.gov free, open source?
I am sure that they plugged in the open source with under 100k of labor and billed millions for “developing” the whole thing. It is good to be a gangsta!
The size difference between the compressed version of JQuery and the fully commented and uncompressed development version is about 160K.
The background image on healthcare.gov... just the background image, not any of the others, by itself is 345K.
160K for the library in absolutely negligible.
Lie, cheat, and steal!
LOL LOL LOL LOL!!! Awesome! That had me crying!! Holy God him and that other idiot were annoying as hell in that movie “Oh SAAAAAM”
You left out the s after the a...
.
LMAO! :D
Now that was damn funny! Thank you, thank you, TLI >;)
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