Post by @fsfe@mastodon.social

2026-05-05 09:18 UTC

🚨 NHS England should not hide public code behind closed doors England’s National Health Service (#NHS England) is preparing to make most of its public source code repositories private by default, according to recent reports. 🫣 The reported internal guidance would require public repositories to be made private unless an explicit exception is approved. Find out more: https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260504-01.en.html #SoftwareFreedom #FreeSoftware

Replies (4)

@dckim@mastodon.social 2026-05-05 10:54

@fsfe@mastodon.social is the argument, as I suspect, security issues? Other security issues with public health data are through the people who work in the industry. Access to any machine might allow someone to collect and distribute the data of any person in the database. I just wonder whether that is secured based on the honour system? Or how then?

Open ##2384376
@webmink@meshed.cloud 2026-05-05 12:24

@fsfe@mastodon.social I believe Terence Eden's blog from last Friday is revelant here too: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

Open ##2384377
@tasket@infosec.exchange 2026-05-05 17:30

@fsfe@mastodon.social Advocates don't know how to defend open source anymore. They are supposed to stress that security comes from properly engineered open protocols & formats. If people don't believe in that then reaching for code secrecy is a logical reaction to threats.

Open ##2384379
@contrarian@mstdn.plus 2026-05-17 15:06

@fsfe@mastodon.social Here's an update from Eden you can pretend is your work https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gds-weighs-in-on-the-nhss-decision-to-retreat-from-open-source/

Open ##2795383