Free Software as a Public Good

acone asks: "Have any national governments taken measures to subsidize open source projects? I'm aware that many have endorsed Linux in particular, and free software in general, but I was wondering about actual funding. I ask because the notion of a good built and maintained by the community almost inevitably suggests that such be treated as a public good. Many of the public goods we now take for granted--such as police, public libraries, and public fire departments--were historically provided either by private enterprises or by loosely-organized volunteers, neither of which have proven nearly as effectively for the common goods as their current government-run equivalents. An excellent example is the organization of the police force, libraries and fire department in colonial Philadelphia, in which these services became established in a very grassroots manner, then gradually gained acceptance as something that the state should provide. This pattern looks temptingly applicable to free software. In addition to the current, community-based mechanisms in which free software is developed, wouldn't it be beneficial to have dedicated groups of professional free software developers, paid by national governments to serve the overall interests of society? Seems to me like such would be a Good Thing."

Comments

I can't wait!

[brooks_talley]

Look at how well (as measured by effeciency, cost, quality) the government administers those police, fire departments, etc. Sure, the people who do the work are almost uniformly (ha!) good people, but the bureaucracy around them makes the groups slow to innovate and/or respond to changing community needs.

I'm sure the government could bring the same level of bureaucrazy and expense to open source. Do you really want them to?

I think this is one for the "be careful what you wish for" files.

Cheers
-b

Re:No, bad idea

[ScottKin]

You know, I was going to make a similar point, but I think that my comments would have fallen on deaf ears due to the obvious leftist-slant that /. has always taken.

Open Source Software = Socialist Software.

Look - everyone contributes, everyone benefits - regardless of the fact that no one can feed themsevles. If Open Source ideology and rhetoric encroaches any further on Commercial/Capitalist Software, we should just nuke the....oh, wait...we can't do that, because we would hurt the poor script-kiddies who use their |337 Linux Boxen to attack the regular, hard-working American Microsoft Operating System Users.

The Cold War never ended - it just shifted focus to the Electronic World, with Socialistas like RMS and Torvalds as the Lenin & Marx of the Computer Industry, and Uncle Bill in Redmond (nearly the geographical opposite of Washington, DC in relation to the US Geography) as the new Uncle Sam.

Deal with it, shut your pie-hole and start using American-Made software, not software by someone from a pacifist/leftists nation like Finnland.

ScottKin - who thinks it would be an awesome thing to have a small American Flag with the words "Made in The USA" on the corner of every Software Program produced in the USA to show our patriotism - and if you don't like that, Deal with that, too!