Bruce Perens

Sequoia is publishing the source code for a new line of voting machines. It's important to note that they aren't talking about Open Source, which isn't just source code but a set of rights that make the software useful and encourage collaboration. Disclosed source code means there's source code, but you don't necessarily have the right to run it, to redistribute it, to modify it - all of which you get with Open Source.

Code without the right to run it wouldn't in general be very useful. But in this case the purpose of making the code public is to allow searches for back-doors and bugs that might allow deliberate distortion of the vote or might cause it accidentally. That's essential if democracy is not to be a sham.

People who are testing such software need rights too, at least the right to run it and to modify it for purposes of experimentation or testing, and the right to communicate with others about it, including with snippets of the code and proposed modifications. It will be interesting to see what rights Sequoia gives researchers.