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

SkoleLinux (School Linux)

[nordicfrost]

School Linux has recieved a grand from the Norwegian educational ministery. The grant was for USD 27,673.81 and funded a fundamental research into the feasibility of Linux in schools.

There won't be some "Office of Open Source"

[Anonymous Coward]

But you will see various governments writing or commissioning code for their own needs. The important thing is to get that code licensed appropriately (BSD or GPL or whatever your particular views are) so that the populace can use it freely.

Government funding

[KillerHamster]

I'd be happy to take their money, it's their influence I don't want. As I see it, part of the freedom associated with free software is freedom from corporate or government bureaucracy deciding what goes into the software. I doubt most governments would agree to sponsor something if they could not exercise tight control over it.

Re:Who funded BSD? TCP/IP?

[Jungle guy]

Very good point. It is also intersting to note that BSD and TCP/IP can be used by private companies any way they want (like, putting it on free software or on a proprietary software). An interesting point would be: shuold government fund GPL-licensed software? Only OSS software companies may benefit from it. Microsoft oposes it strongly, but professor Lessig thinks this kind of funding is OK, as governmenta also funds proprietary software and software patents, that can't be used on OOS.

One day, though, governments might find interesting to fund software that are essential to the internet (like, servers and clients for DNS, http, e-mail, etc).

Careful with the term 'public good'

[madro]

There are goods and services provided by the government and there are public goods. There's some overlap between the two, but in terms of market-based economics, there's a limited definition of a public good (from http://www.bized.ac.uk/stafsup/exams/revec_mfail.h tm)

A pure public good is a good or service which is consumed by everyone and from which no-one can be excluded, defence is a good example. It has two characteristics, non-rivalry i.e. one person's consumption of the good does not reduce the amount available for someone else and non-excludability i.e. no-one can be excluded from consumption of the good.

This brings in the problem of free riders, which is someone who consumes a good or service without paying for it. This problem arises with public goods because why should one person pay when everybody else will contribute to the cost. If everyone took this attitude the good would not be provided hence the need for government intervention.

Software certainly meets the non-rivalry requirement, but non-excludability is not met given the current legal atmosphere concerning the concept of intellectual property.

That said, there are cases where introducing excludability means that what used to be public goods can now be provided through market mechanisms: toll roads are not public goods, but universally accessible roads are. Government intervention is required to provide the latter, but (ideally) not the former. The same can be said for private security forces as a replacement for police. You could even slap gates around libraries so that only those who pay can gain access. The debate then turns to what resources *should* have non-excludability -- what goods and services should any person be able to expect from their government?

Outside that debate, you cannot eliminate non-excludability from certain items: national defense and global climate quality come to mind.