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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."
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.
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.
I remember reading something a year or so ago about the German government subsidizing KDE development. I may be wrong on that.
Haven't they? And for good reason, this is basically what a good portion of his book "The Future of Ideas" is about....that is, a commons for everyone which enriches society, and how corporations are taking it over to the detriment of society in general. Read this book.
Don't be a zoa (zealous overbearing ass), be happy!
It seems to me that the very idea of paying someone to write free software is the very antithesis of what free software is all about. (Not to mention the practical problems of managing the stable of programmers, ensuring that work actually gets done etc...)
Far better would be something like the Ford Foundation giving grants to folks after they have a track record.
I am in the process of obtaining a government subsidy for the development of a Client Management System for Youth Shelters in Ontario... things are looking good, very good.
So yes, if you present your plan to the Canadian Government, anyway, in good terms, showing that it will benefit all; it is easy to obtain a subsidy.
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.
Have any national governments taken measures to subsidize open source projects?
China?
Don't know for sure, but it would be a clear candidate to subsidize
Another case is Germany paying for that KDE project... how was it kalled? Kroupware? But that's not subsidizing...
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Was funding OpenBSD and OpenSSL, for a little while until they changed their minds
Yes, software companies love to pay taxes and then the money used to create software to drive them out of business.
On the other hand, I do think it can be used for to help society in general.
But I feel it should be written under BSD-like(public domain) license, putting under a GPL-like license is just wrong for this situation.
That's what America's Army game essentially does now. Try it out, it's a great example of government making software that is freely copyable (read the license).
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Basically I would worry that if a burocracy was added to the development process, it would end up mucking the development process up.
However, I'm pretty sure that some OSS softwares are directly descended from various government projects that were developed under the GPL or made open source after completion. (can someone help me with examples, or tell me I'm wrong).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Check your history. Guess who funded most of the BSD development? Right. The US Government. Who funded development of TCP/IP? Right again. Are these open source? Yes. Were they funded by Government for the Common Good? Yes. This is nothing new. This has been going on for a couple of decades now.
If you examine the parallel to its logical conclusion this is kind of scary. Do you really want to allow political action groups (such as all officers of the Microsoft corporation) the opportunity to affect the election of the Open Source Commissioner? Part of the state-sponsored common good is to put it under the control and regulation of elected officials. This is not a win to my mind...
Police Forces are national.
.02
There are some United Forces (UN) but they really arent a major say in what goes on (US war on "Terrorists").
If governments have thier say, they will think what they choose to write is the right way. Governments of different nations dont always agree (AKA WAR).
Whats to stop the US government to hire more professional coders to get more of what they want to see in OSS
Yes OSS has the branches and someone has the overall say in what makes it in and what does not but when was the last time you heard someone disagreeing with the government and not getting some sort of herassment for it (raisethefist.com) ?
Do you really want to add that much more politics into OSS?
Do you really want to wait for the government to finish coding something that you need to use (we all know how governement deadlines work!!!) ?
Just my
Public goods need to benefit EVERYONE, not EVERYONE uses linux or open software.
and not everyone is driving his car on that road, but the gov payed for it. and not everyone is going to the public library, but the gov payed for it, and so on.
oss is just like a library: free information for everyone.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
The US, through the NIH (Dept. HHS), funds software development projects, some of which are free (GPLed) software projects. NIH funding comes to researchers through a variety of mechanisms, including specific requests for proposals, and often through programs devoted to particular public health related goals. Fundees are often at Universities and sometimes have the freedom to release their software under whatever licenses they choose.
I don't want to Slashdot the particular office that funds my work, but if you poke around on the NIH web site (www.nih.gov) for informatics-related programs, you can find some good examples of programs that fund software development. If you poke further, you'll find that some of those projects develop GPLed software.
I don't know that this is the ultimate expression of a government supporting free software as a public good, but it's certainly an area in which you'll find examples of government-funded free software that's designed to promote public health and/or basic science.
This points out a problem with this. The GPL is based on Copyright Law, your right to copy the software is granted under the GPL only if you follow the provisions of the GPL. Since the Government can't hold copyrights, how could the Government fund copyrighted development?
Now that I type this, I realize the Government CAN fund copyrighted development. They do it all the time. Government contractors often copyright their works and license it to the Government. The Government could let contracts for software requiring that the software be licensed exclusively under the GPL.
Look at the FAA: They are funded with tax dollars, but a lot of people don't feel safe flying (even before 9/11), and choose not to. That doesn't mean that the FAA should be privatized, it just means that it isn't necessarily going to benefit everybody who pays taxes.
So who will benifit from the funding other than open source developers? This will not provide any new software to the public. The same software will be availiable, only more developers will get paid for it.
I personally don't see this going anywhere though because it really is a community effort. Almost like voting in a way. If you want a feature, simply "vote" it into an implementation. That can be done by actually programming it or requesting the developers to add it.
Government employees could work out specific algorithims/implementations (the best example being SE Linux), but the heart of open source is the community, and I don't see that shifting to the government anytime soon. There will always be more community developers than government ones. Small time additions to the open source world is all I see from government institutions. I doubt anything bigger than the SE Linux kernel would happen, especially as the Department of Free Software Production or something.
Besides, would any government really want to help create the infrastructure of another government for them (e.g. "terrorist" nation uses the USALinux distro)? There's a reason for export restrictions on certain cryptographic algorithms in the US. Or would those nations really trust foreign governments to do this? Might make an electronic war pretty easy if you wrote all the software.
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.
It seems to me that the very idea of paying someone to write free software is the very antithesis of what free software is all about. (Not to mention the practical problems of managing the stable of programmers, ensuring that work actually gets done etc...)
Then you don't know much about free software. Free software is about freedom, not price. GNU and the FSF have sold free software since the 1980s, on magnetic tape and later CD ROM. Some of their products were quite pricy (and available for gratis download besides), but they still made some money selling the media, as the convinience was worth it to some.
Government funded public works is a Good Thing(tm), whether it is highways, the last mile of connectivity (which alas, is privately owned by local monopoly barons in most, but not all, of the US), or basic software infrastructure used to hold and manipulate public data.
We would never tolerate our highway system being held hostage by a single company. Why on earth would we tolerate such a thing with our public information?
As for private funding, that is all well and good, but private funding has limitations (such as the profit motive, which works sometimes but, contrary to right-wing myth, does not always work or yeild the best results). Public funding has its limitations as well, but pulling projects that are serving the public interest because of no immediate exploitable profit generally isn't one of them.
Indeed, the best public goods are those which include both private and public funding, where the limitations of one are generally countered by the strengths of the other. Examples include, but are not limited to, academia and university research.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If you think having to fill out forms to requisition a 256M stick of RAM from the IT Department is oppressive...
If you think having to fill out more forms and get them signed by your manager, the IT manager, and the Purchasing Department's manager, and then wait two days for Purchasing to order the RAM is unproductive and oppressive...
If you think having to fill out even more forms the next week when you find that the fuckup in Purchasing bought two sticks 256M of PC133 SDRAM (or worse, one stick of 512M DDR instead of two sticks of 256M DDR for your dual-channel workstation), because "You wanted memory, and we found that PC133 was cheaper"... is assinine, counterproductive, and oppressive...
NOTICE: As a condition of receiving a grant under the Patriots' Freedom Software Allowance Act, I affirm, under penalty of perjury that Software developed under the Patriots' Freedom License will in no way be used to transfer data by Specially Designated Nationals, nor any data in violation of the PATRIOT Act, nor will it be used by any third party to facilitate violations of the Communications Decency Act. Software will not be made available to Migrant Employees of any Railroad as per the Railroad Workers' Protection Act of 1966, except such Migrant Employees of Railroads covered under the Railroad Pensioners' Guarantee Act of 1968 (amended 1972), and will comply with all other ordinances and conditions of local, state, and Federal law, subject to amendment.
Friday Afternoon Paradox: Free Software is a Public Good, but the instant it becomes a Public Goods, it ceases to be Free Software.
There's a flaw in your argument. You can purchase private security other than your local police department. That doesn't make your local police any less of a public good. Likewise, you could choose not to run free software.
My personal take on it is that the government should cut back on purchasing proprietary software and use free software whenever possible. Those savings could then be used to cut taxes and give taxpayers back more of their paycheck. I don't like the idea of the government handing cash to free software developers any more than to proprietary software developers. If the government does contribute to free software it should be though man-hours that advance features the government itself requires.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I have no problem with the government sponsoring free software development, but if they do so, they should use a license that allows anyone and everyone to benefit from the software. That means a BSD style license versus a GPL license.
The GPL is probably the reason that the government would be unable to just take the reigns of free software funding, like they took over the operation of libraries. Simply because it is counterproductive for the government, which has effectively unlimited resources, to compete with commercial entities. Nobody wins in that situation, not the gov't, not the companies, and not the consumer. GPL code cannot be used commercially in a conventional sense, and if the government were to put serious efforts behind it, they could wind up destroying a lot of commercial enterprises, not to mention wasting taxpayer dollars for a while as they duplicate a service which is already being provided to the public. Eventually, once commercial developers go under, they would just be providing the same service more expensively (government is generally less efficient than private enterprise).
Developers who use the GPL have already decided that their software should not be a public good in the sense that libraries are (in that anyone could go to a library, read books on a subject, and then resell what they learned for money). Even though the knowledge to understand GPL code might be expensive to get, and difficult to package in a useful way, they insist that anyone should be able to redistribute such an effort, for free, in exchange only for recognition for the developer. This effectively makes knowledge easy to exchange, but at a cost of making it worthless, unsellable.
A BSD license on goverment developed code might not be much better initially, as what could result would be the government doing work for commercial companies for free (from their point of view), while they continue to charge comparable prices for their work of packaging the software. Eventually, though, prices would be driven down, as the software itself became a commodity, and the knowledge of how to package it was the only way companies could compete. This would be software as a public good, in a general sense. Companies like the initial consequence of this scenario, and fear the second, so they want to make sure that things stay in the first stage, where the government is doing a certain amount of work for them, without eating their lunch.
I think if the government were to step in and make certain kinds of software (starting with the most often used pieces of code, the OS) a commodity, it could have very positive results for society. On the other hand, open source developement is already going on, so maybe they don't need to be involved, except for preserving the legal conditions that allows this to happen.
The "mechanisms" you mention are "services" (libraries, police, and fire). The government provides these for the good of all people
What you want is a "product" and not a "service". What you're asking for is for the government to provide free every product which does "good for the public". This would include, soap, laundry detergent, deoderant (heh), cars, bikes, clothes, scissors, pens, pencils, paper, toilet paper, paper clips, computers, books, magazines (aka toilet paper), etc etc (you get my point).
So what you're asking for is the government to determine what "product" is for the public good, subsidize it to limit business opprotunities to provide individuals who are looking to earn a living and profit from their work. Not to mention stock holders who make money on the profits made by companies who sell these products.
Doing this would not only affect the general moral of workers who provide such services, but will put thousands of people out of work while at the same time increasing our taxes to figures that I don't even want to imagine.
Generally, bad idea. Period. Besides, this "public good" is only to be for the public good of about 1/4 the US population.
Oh and by the way, most towns in the U.S. still have volunteer services where very little money is provided by the town.
Me, I think Bill Gates should get the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing them together.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
First off: The government should subsidize Free Software not open source software as a whole, if it subsidizes anything.
Second: I don't think that the governemt should have any direct control over Free Software or the manufacture therof. Police and fire departments, as well as schools and other public institutions, are completely government controlled. I don't want the government to be able to make arbitrary rules for the code that I want to write as Free Software, which could feasibly happen if the government subsidized Free Software in the same way as the aforementioned institutes are.
Another thing to remember: Free Software is Free Speech, not Free Beer. Programmers can (and do) make money off of thier Free Software. Should the government subsidize commercial entities? I don't particularly agree with airline bailouts or other corporate gimmes that the government spends my tax money on; I would disagree just as much if the government was giving me money to write and sell Free Software as a subsidation (if I were selling it for profit as well.)
Now, I do agree that it would be nice to set up something like a grant system for Free Software programmers. I could write the government with a proposal for such-and-such program, get a government endorsement and some grant money, and write the code up. It would also be great if there were government coding standards that participants would have to keep to (think GNU coding standards.) This would garuntee that the taxpayer's money is going to a good quality product.
But I trust the government as far as I can throw it. The implementation I described would be ideal, but I'm sure that if the government got into software, it would just make a mess. The government is already creating enough of a problem as far as intellectual "property" laws and software patents. I don't think I want it meddling with my development plans any more.
Oh well. Just my 2c.
First of all public goods only need to benefit enough people to enjoy a majority support. Does the military benefit everyone? How about the people who disagree with how the military is being used? Does the bus system benefit everyone? Does welfare benefit everyone?
Arguably all of these do support everyone; that is, everyone benefits by living in a country where the destitute don't have to resort to theft to avoid starvation, everyone benefits from living in a society which is well protected from foreign aggressors, and society as a whole benefits from having people who are incapable of passing a driving test, or unable to afford a car, never the less able to hold a job and be productive so that they won't have to live on welfare.
Likewise open software benefits everyone -- if not directly then indirectly -- in lower prices for services, in greater productivity, resulting in greater general prosperity, in better and cheaper communication technologies, and greater efficiency for those areas that open software is able to cover.
Where would we be without open software. Let's see. No email, no Internet (no DNS), no TCP/IP, no world wide web, no interoperable software. Novell, Microsoft, MacOS, and the mainframes would all still be separate islands.
Yeah, I guess that doesn't add up to squat.
--
BitTorrent in C -- LibBT
http://www.sf.net/projects/libbt
Hence the free-as-in-speech. We WANT anyone to be able to do anything with the open source projects. Linus, however, maintains the official "untainted" kernel tree. You use his when you want the raw kernel, and apply patches such as openmosix (http://openmosix.sf.net) when you require extra functionality. The infrastructure is there, but it's also circumventable if it doesn't meet your needs.
The Government of the United States of America would like to announce that it has established a Department of Software (DoS). The DoS will work to develop software for the people. What will this mean for you, the American people? Here are some highlights:
The Government is exicted to be your new provider of public software! If you have a piece of software you want written, contact a local lobbiest or special interest group. Others need not submit applications.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes socialism seems to be the answer for dealing with the digital world, its not the answer for the physical world but definately for the digital world.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Have any national governments taken measures to subsidize open source projects?
Yes, who do you think paid for the earliest work on Linux? The Finnish government, of course! Like in many European countries, the taxpayer gives grants to students, and that's most likely what Linus lived on.
The other high-profile project funded by the German government is Kollaborate. This was done by the "BSI" (Federal Agency for IT security), which is known to be very Linux-friendly (and equally MS-unfriendly).
If I can quit my job, work on free software, and go down to the local welfare office and fill out "free software developer" and get a fat check, then our society will have made some progress.
Seriously though, such a program would require a careful balance between funding OSS and not killing our technology economy. We live in a capitalist society, and if our government takes action that hurts businesses that are considered to be doing an "OK" job (MS) then it seems a little contradictory to capitalism.
Funding and providing Fire Departments is different because not only are these Public Good, they determined that they are necessary for healthy living (not dying.) Software is nowhere near this level of importance to most people. The government has no motivation to stop software businesses from doing what they do. If the government needs something (like TCP/IP) then they commission it and it gets made.
# Erik
The idea that free software be provided by or developed by national governments is one that makes me wary of what amount of control the government can excercise. He who pays the piper calls the tune -- and free software is much more than just adhering to a software license. Things like publicly available bug databases seem to be the first thing to disappear when large dollar figures become involved.
Much like the church is best off separated from the state, so the free software "movement", as a philosophy, cannot survive if institutionalized as a part of government. Free software organizations already get government and corporate grants, support and development through educational institutions, and widespread acceptance from the technical community, all without having a "Department of Public Software"
Now imagine a scenario where there is governmnet funding. Out of work programmers, people who took a semester of pascal in highschool and are now looking for cash, etc., will go looking for projects to do to get in on the funding chuckwagon rather than responding to an existing need. Other hangers-on will attempt to join, not because they know the subject well or feel the same need to create a particular bit of software, but because they want in on the $$$. Arguments over which code to include would be biased by the author's desire to prove to the funding source that they had added the most lines of code, and not on technical merrit. Overall, it would become the opposite of what a good open source project should be.
Well, by that rational there should be no Coast Guard since a significant amount of the population is landlocked. There should be no federal funding for the INS to increase patrols on the Mexico-U.S. border since that isn't much of a problem to the citizens in Minnesota. Heck, there shouldn't be federal funding for higher educational institutions because they do not benefit every citizen directly.
A typical response may be "Well, the Coast Guard, INS, and higher educational institutions benefit many directly, and benefit most indirectly, so they are still for the public good." Well that's exactly what OSS does.
Although not "EVERYONE" uses Linux or open source, "EVERYONE" does benefit from its use. Unless you live in a hole, you benefit from it directly on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not. Even those who do not benefit from it directly, benefit from it indirectly. Since further adoption benefits most if not all people, I think the author of the article suggesting further adoption and additional governmental support under the pretense of "the public good" is an insightful valid suggestion.
The thought that something for the public good means "an item or service that must benefit every individual directly" as is implied in your comment is completely ridiculous, a flawed presumption, and I feel you are careless for stating it as fact.
Beware blue cats moving at
First, it depends on whether or not *all* the taxpayers get to use the software. That means Public Domain or BSD, not GPL. As much as you might love the GPL, you can't deny it's unfair for those who follow the software ownership business model to be forced to pay taxes so that their business can be undermined. A PD or BSD release puts both GPL'd and proprietary projects on an even footing.
Second, it depends on whether or not the market is already providing the service. For example, a new government *NIX-based OS is hardly needed, what with all the companies producing such things in a seemingly endless variety. This applies for anything, not just software. The government should only provide a service when the market fails to provide the service, and the services is deemed necessary to the public good.
That said, the question is moot anyway. The government already sponsors free software. Google around and you'll see that grants specify that copyrighted material produced by grant recipients is "retained by the grantee, but must be published in a manner that allows others to benefit from the research" or something to that effect.
In the past, people slapped "academic use only" clauses on their software. Lately, they've been GPL'ing is a step in the right direction, but not quite all the way to PD/BSD.
It's understandable that researchers want to retain their rights, but when it comes to selling licenses under something other than GPL or academic use, there is a culture of $call pricing which really sucks.
You know $call pricing. That's where the cost of licensing is to call the researcher and negotiate some horrendous deal. Typicly, only corporations are invited into such a deal. A price schedule is never published. It's like dealing with embedded board manufacturers. Yuck.
I can understand why they want grantees to retain rights, but they should require the publication of a price schedule for non-GPL usage.
Now, if grantees had to PD or BSD their work, what would happen? There might be fewer grant applicants, which could be perceived as a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It's good if you're swinging the budget axe, and bad if you think there should be lots of research. However, with fewer grantees you could pay more to each grantee to offset the fact that they have less control over their work.
It would be interesting to see how many grantees are actually selling their work anyway. I bet a lot of stuff is just sitting there at Universities, getting stale, because it was easier for people to roll their own than deal with $call pricing. Either that, or the researchers left academe and went to work for industry. That's a waste, and obviously not a public good.
So. Is Free Software a Public Good? It depends.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A problem with your argument is that software is not a physical product like soap or any of the others you list as examples.
That aside, I think that the government competing with private enterprise example you gave could happen, in fact it already does, as the government DOES fund software, both open and closed. It hasn't really put anyone out of a job, in fact, since they are paying people to develope software they are creating jobs.
It's more likely that a programmer would get a *different* programming job than loose a job due to an increase in government funding of software projects, whether open or closed.
Man, if my governments would stop rounding up grants to the nearest dollar, imagine how much money it would save...
=)
What you want is a "product" and not a "service". What you're asking for is for the government to provide free every product which does "good for the public". This would include, soap, laundry detergent, deoderant (heh), cars, bikes, clothes, scissors, pens, pencils, paper, toilet paper, paper clips, computers, books, magazines (aka toilet paper), etc etc (you get my point).
No, the question is asking whether the government should fund the development of software that's freely available for the public good. There's a big difference between providing copy-able bits and providing physical products. You're drawing an unwarranted parallel between a single government program and full-scale socialism.
So what you're asking for is the government to determine what "product" is for the public good, subsidize it to limit business opprotunities to provide individuals who are looking to earn a living and profit from their work. Not to mention stock holders who make money on the profits made by companies who sell these products.
So? Libraries limit business opportunities for bookstores. Public fire departments limit business opportunities for private firefighting companies. Police departments limit business opportunities for private security firms and private investigators. Any government service detracts from private business opportunities. The question to be asked is whether society benefits from the tradeoff.
Doing this would not only affect the general moral of workers who provide such services, but will put thousands of people out of work while at the same time increasing our taxes to figures that I don't even want to imagine.
I can't tell here whether you're referring to a government program to sponsor open-source development or to your straw-man target socialist government. If you're talking only about government funding of software development, I can't see how that would raise taxes to the enormous levels you seem to think it would.
Generally, bad idea. Period. Besides, this "public good" is only to be for the public good of about 1/4 the US population.
Not true. Software is fundamentally important to the economy. If publically funded software development were to make software more widely and cheaply available, the efficiency of the economy as a whole would improve, to everyone's benefit, even those who never sit in front of a monitor.
Oh and by the way, most towns in the U.S. still have volunteer services where very little money is provided by the town.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, any town with a fire department has to spend a significant amount of money on equipment and physical infrastructure, regardless of whether the actual labor is paid or free.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Everyone does use Free Software, even if they are not aware of it.
Much of the web is run on Free Software, and most (if not all) packets will cross routers, firewalls or bridges that are running Free Software at some point during thier journey.
In fact, thier own computers may be using code that was directly derived from Free Software, such as the improved network stack in Windows (from BSD, IIRC).
The world of propietary, closed source software has benefitted greatly from Free Software development, and this has benefitted EVERYONE, even if they know nothing about it.
Including you.
Also, there is no precident to a "benefit EVERYONE" requirement for government funding (at least in the U.S.).
One example of government funding for a select few persons would be the funding of natural disater insurance programs for persons who choose to build thier houses on flood plains and on beaches. Government funded flood plain insurance enables people to live along rivers and the same coverage allowed the wealthier americans to ensure that most of us could not afford to live near the beach. (Before natural disaster relief plans covered beachfront property, it was quite inexpensive to have a house on or near the beach, but most chose not to because of the possibility of storm damage or erosion.)
Another would be farming subsidies for tobbacco farmers. I fail to see how one could conscrue such funding as "beneficial to EVERYONE".
Read, L
I have been developing jahshaka for over 1 1/2 years now and would like to find out how i can get some cash to help move the project ahead...
I figure while i 'm at it i could use some of the cash to get a new mercedes to help move myself ahead as well
Think my criminal record will get in the way?
Sounds like we are selling out the revolution... the government doesnt give you anything for free...
Computer software, for the purposes of determining whether or not it is a public good, is like information.
Many publicly funded institutions and agencies provide information at little -- and usually, no -- direct cost. The providing of this information is widely considered to be a public good.The particular purpose and sort of this information varies:
- Some of this information is the sort of information which enables private citizens and land owners -- private citizens granted temporary, revocable, and limited authority over some portion of our natural resources -- to steward our nation's -- and our world's -- shared resources in a responsible way, consistent with the duties they as such have to each and every one of us.
- Some of this information enables private citizens to do with these resources over which they have this temporary, revocable, and limited authority, that which they have a legitimate expectation to do.
- Some of this information enables citizens to evaluate the risks they face by engaging in certain behaviors, or by living in certain ways or in certain environments.
- Some of this information enables private citizens enables citizens to carry out tasks and to obtain certain other goods which they as people in these modern times have a legitimate expectation be able to do or to have access to, regardless of their social, political, or economic status, situation, and circumstance.
One example of this type of information is that provided through "extension services":
Many counties, states, as well as public universities, provide publicly funded information services. This often includes providing information about agriculture, livestock, landscaping, land care, building, wildlife, codes, and drainage systems.
Another example of this information is personal health care related:
We provide information to expecting mothers, to those citizens -- and non citizens within our borders -- who face an increased health risk due to their behavior, life choices, or environment,. We provide to everyone information about their bodies and life changes, to the extent that they as people in these modern times have a legitimate expectation to know about their bodies and life changes regardless of their education or their ability to pay for it.
Computer software as a public good is similar in many ways to information as a public good:
- Computer software, like information, once obtained, is an unlimited resource. Distributing one copy of it does not limit or otherwise affect our ability to distribute another identical copy, and this distribution may be done at very little to no cost.
- Computer software, like information, requires both an initial investment to organize, verify, and to be put into an accessible form, as well as continuing costs to maintain the accuracy and relevance of.
- Computer software, like information, provides the groundwork which enables private citizens to be good stewards of that portion of our resources over which they have some temporary, revocable, and limited authority.
- Computer software, like information, provides the groundwork which enable private citizens to carry out the tasks and to obtain the additional goods which they in virtue of being citizens have a legitimate expectation to carry out and to obtain.
One example of this is access to electronic communication:
Increasingly, modern people have a legitimate expectation to be able to communicate with friends, family members, their representatives, and appointed government officials, electronically, and from the privacy of their own homes. Software provides the groundwork which enables these citizens to realize these legitimate expectations. It is unacceptable for the realization of private citizens' legitimate expectation to use secure, reliable, and comprehensible, and usable, electronic communication in the privacy of their own homes to be dependent upon their acceptance of a draconian set of terms of use and limitation of rights such as m
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
The smart goverments will look upon the dumb goverments spending money on free software, and then just use it. Thank you very much. Why spend money on software which your competitors can use with 0 research and development cost?
Think about it.
(Warning: the following post is very glib (but not really funny). It doesn't take itself too seriously so you shouldn't either.)
Proprietary software sucks. Don't take my word for it. Just read the article.
I mean, after all--if the proprietary software is already buggy, if the companies charge for the tech support as well, then what is the company really providing for the user? Clever marketing? Ease of aquisition of software (can be downloaded or purchased from a store)? Easy installation?
Okay, that's it guys. If the proprietary software really does suck that much, then all the Open Source community needs to do is (somehow) run a huge marketing campain and make the auto-installers work better. The tech support might suck, and the software might be full of bugs, but that's not any different from commercial software. (at least according to that one, rather short, CNN article) The only remaining barriers are lack of knowelge from the general public and difficulties with installation.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
The German government has paid for a number of applications that have been implemented as GPLed software products. In particular, there have been several high profile projects such as Sphinx (gpg and kmail integration) and kroupware (now transforming into kolab and kontact).
But there is a lot of OSS activity at lower levels, for example the Java Anon Proxy (JAP) project as a joint venture between Dresden University and the privacy commissioner of Land Schleswig-Holstein, several School Linux Projects, a large scale Linux deployment for schools around the city of Moers (serving 250.000 users), and many more projects at a similar level.
In studies on Open Source Development, many European countries come out "on top", that is the number of developers from European countries is higher than it should be according to their proportional headcount. Such Government subsidized OSS projects and deployments are a strong factor, creating a climate where OSS can flourish and produce many good projects and products.