Software Transparency

Check the Software Transparency portal at PUC-Rio. Click here, or follow the link on the Links sidebar.

Information Transparency

In discussing software transparency, we have differentiated the concept of information transparency from process transparency.

A recent article in Wired does tackle the issue of information transparency. It points out that, allowing access to huge volumes of data is not sufficient for transparency, the information also needs to be understandable. In our definition of transparency as a network of softgoals, we list auditability, understandability, informativeness, usuability and accessibility as required steps towards transparency.

The article mentions the use of XBRL , a domain language for financial data on top of XML, as a possible way of organizing data, and as such contributing for a better understandability as well as allowing for automated processes (software) to interpret them. Although this is positive, it is just a small part of the overall problem.

Need for Transparency

Professor Ricardo Reis posted a note, in the Brazilian Computer Society e-mail list, regarding the issue of citation counting. He cited the paper "Show me the Data" published by the Journal of Cell Biology, as a must read for those interested in the politics of research dissemination.

The article, "Show me the data", is an excellent example of the clamor for transparency.

As I have being saying: software transparency is a key issue for society.

I gave a talk at the IFIP 2.9 addressing this issue. It already shows progress on our research on software transparency.

Software Transparency

I have recently presented a keynote address ( in Portuguese) at the Brazilian Software Engineering Conference.

During the talk I reffered to 3 different videos. All of them are very much related to
the concept of transparency.

The first is one of the more transparent communications I ever watched, the second is a TV news reporting that individuals are becoming more willing to be transparent, and the third one is a ingenious and transparent way of understanding buble sort.

Software Transparency II

After posting a brief description of what I believe Software Transparency should mean, I found several references to this keyword (using Google).

1. A company that registered the term transparency software as a trade mark. They sell database reverse engineering tools.
2. A blog note by Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet commenting on the announcement by Palamida of an auditing product that helps software transparency. It also mentions GroundWork, a company that sells IT infrastructure monitoring.
3. Reflective is a company that sells software testing technology, it uses the term in a restricted way, for the consuption of software developers.
4. Eric Sink reporting on the concept of transparency at Microsoft. It is not a conincidence that it comes from the Visual Studio group.
5. A note from Dana Blankenhorn on Corante with the title "Open Source Transparency", brings up the key point: "you can see the code". However, who will understand it, and yet, who guarantees that the code you see is the code that is running.
   
6. Prof. Tanimoto presented a keynote at VL/HCC 05 where he links transparency to interfaces:

Transparency is an aspect of software comprising openness in design, glass-box features, and support for interactive inspection.

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03/20/09

Please see other notes on the topic following the tags.

More details on software transparency are available here.

Software Transparency

Transparency has been, for long, a general requirement for democratic societies. The right to be informed and to have access to the information has been an important issue on modern societies.

People want to be informed in a proper way. As such, transparency is a well regard characteristic for organizations.

However, as software permeates several aspects of our society, at some point in the future, software engineers will need to deal with yet another demand: transparency. In such foreseen environment, engineers will need to have methods, techniques and tools to help make transparent software.

I am starting to work on the idea of software transparency. If you may: look at your browser under view and and under view code, this is an initial idea towards the big challenge that lies ahed: how to make transparent software. I will soon post a more detailed note about the topic.

If you are also interesed on that, drop a comment.