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.

Re:SkoleLinux (School Linux)

[nordicfrost]

A link could be useful... Sorry!

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.

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

[agentZ]

This isn't a worry in the United States. According to 17 USC 105, works of the US Government are not eligible for copyright protection.

Thus, all of the code written by government employees for government business, if released to the public, is public domain.

For example, check out my computer forensic tools: md5deep and foremost. Your tax dollars at work!

KDE and Germany

[Nick of NSTime]

I remember reading something a year or so ago about the German government subsidizing KDE development. I may be wrong on that.

Re:KDE and Germany

[cabalamat2]

The German government is funding open source email encryption software under project Aegypten. Some of this is KDE software, for example work on the kmail mail client.

See Project Aegypten Home Page for details.

Re:KDE and Germany

[phoenix_rizzen]

Yeppers, that would be for the Kroupware project, which includes the Kolab server, Kolab client (KMail + KDEPIM integrated together), and other related projects. The funding was to create an Exchange Server replacement.

Someone's been reading Lessig...

[madMingusMax]

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.

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:Government funding

[drfireman]

Government influence over software isn't likely to work by government heavies leaning on you to make your software do this or that. It's much more likely to work by the government deciding to fund the people who do what they want, and not to fund others. If what you want to do isn't in line with what the government wants, you probably weren't going to get funded anyway. If it is, it's hard to imagine the government investing heavily in micro-managing your project.

Re:Government funding

[Traxman]

I agree that the development process would be tainted by the influence of goverment money. However, if the software is truly open sourced, how much influence could they have over it? True, those that took the money could be influenced, but anyone could contribute.

I would go so far as to argue that the freedom from corporate and goverment influence is one of the most essential notions surrounding the development of free software. Although, if a government is willing to concede that open code is of higher quality and more secure than its closed source counterpart, then they really couldn't exert much influence on the development. The inefficiencies that would result from their meddling would be out in public for all to see.

Its an interesting concept, which definately deserves more attention.

Traxman

Who funded BSD? TCP/IP?

[brentlaminack]

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.

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).

Re:Who funded BSD? TCP/IP?

[Mr. McGibby]

Government funded projects should use BSD style licenses. All of them. Everything the government creates should be available to everyone, regardless of what they want to do with it. "Everyone" paid for it, so "everyone" should be able to use it however they want.

Sometimes, I don't see why folks complain that MS used some government source code in a product. If they want it to become a standard, then everyone needs to be able to freely integrate it into their systems, including commercial interests.

Code is International...

[Popsikle]

Police Forces are national.

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 .02

Re:in short, no

[Simon (S2)]

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.

the united states

[drfireman]

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.

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.

Public AND Private Funding are both Appropriate

[FreeUser]

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.

Re:Public AND Private Funding are both Appropriate

[urbazewski]

Public funding is nearly ALWAYS a bad thing. It distorts the market place and a distorted market place means inefficiently allocated recourses. That's economic 101. It's a BAD THING.

What's missing from this discussion is a definition of what a public good is:

...a public good is essentially a good that is difficult to exclude someone from using, and that one person's use does not deny someone else the use of that good. A public park or clean air are typical examples of public goods. (read this article for typical incorrect definitions of public goods provided by econ 101 students)

Free software is indeed a public good because by definitoin it is difficult to exclude other people from using it and other than the cost of bandwidth to make the code available my using doesn't prevent anyone else using it. The problem with public goods is that most people want them, but no one has much of an incentive to provide them individually --- which is why public goods are typically provided by the government. Public funding of public goods does not "distort the market" because the non-excludability of public goods means there's not much of a market for them in the first place.

Anything that can be copied digitally becomes more and more like a public good everyday...

Sure, as long as the license is right

[Knife_Edge]

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.

Answer: No

[isa-kuruption]

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?

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.

Re:in short, no

[Anonymous Canard]

Public goods need to benefit EVERYONE...

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.

Software as a Public Service

[Dr. Transparent]

New! Public Service Software (PSS)

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:

• Software Developers provided with unlimited supply of non-fat snacks and low-sodium Soda Pop at no cost to Developers
• All software to be developed on new Government Operating system: GLOSS (Government Licensed Open Software System). Because GLOSS is still in development, no software can be developed at this time. Estimated time of development is 10 years. Cost: only $100M per development month! What a bargain!
• All development will take place at new DoS headquarters in DC. Headquarters building is now beneath the washington monument, which has been wired with 802.11g antenna to provide free internet access for all of DC.
• All development will take place using the new Free United Development (FUD) language. This language combines all languages into one. A true celebration of language diversity. It's procedural, modal, object-oriented, iterative, and recursive all at the same time!
• To protect the environment the DoS developers will use new state-of-the-art environmentally friendly computers. The keyboards are a bamboo-syrup composite, and the processors are made entirely of nitrogen, cooled to a solid. To further protect the environment no upgrades will be allowed until environmental impact studies can take place
• New development at DoS will use the new ISO standard Government Unlimited Model (GUM). The GUM incorporates the opinions and psychological evaluations of each developer to create a project that everyone will enjoy working on, but will not be offended by. Because of their controversial nature, the following areas will be considered "off limits" to DoS programmers: any development for the military, any development for organizations who sell, lease, rent, or offer for free any object that might possibly contain a religious quote or a quote by any founding father of America, anything that can "play mp3s".
• Also, the DoS will be instituing a strict policy of comment appropriateness. All developer comments will be checked for offensive words or slogans. The following are strictly off-limits:
  • Rush Limbaugh
  • Pro life
  • Christian
  • Fox News
  • Matt Drudge
  • Republican
  • Free Enterprise
  • Corporation
  • Opportunity
  • Liberty
  • Justice
  • Conservative
• Finally, the DoS will adhere to strict OSHA standards: only 500 words may be typed before a mandatory 5 minute break must be taken. Any more typing that this may require a pay raise and/or paid leave.

• 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.

Re:Software as a Public Service

[curunir]

In response to the announcement of the creation of the Dept of Software (DoS), Microsoft announced that it would start a new program to sell it's software at half of normal price to better compete with the free software the DoS would be offering.

Microsoft believes "Operation Half-Priced Software" (OS/2, for short) will make its software more competitively priced. CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "We belive that OS/2 software is superior to DoS software and we think users will be willing to pay a premium for it."

/me *ducks* (and appologizes profusely :-)

No, bad idea

[frovingslosh]

Clearly government meddling and red tape and additional taxes to support it all isn't needed and for the most part isn't even wanted. The open source community would be greatly hurt by this. I know many people would simply stop contributing, either because they didn't want to play with the bureaucrats and all the red tape, or just because the were disgusted by the new system.

Re:No, bad idea

[RancidBeef]

That's right! The bureaucrats who actually dole out the money would ultimately control the spending.

What is the obsession with everyone wanting the government to pay for everything? Has no one figured out that all government money comes from (is extorted from) the taxpayer? Why not have the government provide everyone with a house? a car? food? clothing? Those are all important! Entertainment is important, too, so "free" movie passes for everyone! Free vacations! Why, fiber-optic 10GB broadband to every home is a basic human right!

So you want to become a official Sponsored Software Developer? Describe the proposed project on form FSDF-11/a (in triplicate). Show us a copy of your software development license. Be ready for your quarterly code inspection. Do you have the proper number of minorities working on that project?

-Sigh- I so wish Socialism had died with the Soviet Union...

Re:No, bad idea

[frovingslosh]

There's no valid reason that the government should make me pay taxes and then take that money and give it to people who are now quite willing to do the work for free. And I sure don't want the government deciding and telling us what the public wants, and I'm not even sure I want the public telling us what the public wants. The developers should code what they want to code, if there is a need the system has shown that it gets filled under the current modes of open source development pretty well.

And who do you suggest gets that special funding for what the "public wants"? Once you pay some 14 year old kid who just happens to be the child of a Chicago democrat party official, how do you avoid paying every open source developer out there, particularly those of core key components? Or do you just thumb your nose at them and tell them you expect them to keep contributing their efforts for free while their taxes are being given to projects that they don't consider worthy of effort?

Re:No, bad idea

[wastaz]

As someone who lives in a socialist democratic country, I cant see how the parent post got modded as "+5 insightful" instead of "-1 flamebait or -1 troll"

Taxes, here in Sweden, are high as hell. From what I've heard, we've got like the highest taxes in the world, end of discussion. However, we have a very high social standard. Those taxes do good. The hospitals are all owned by the state and provide a great service to the people who needs it for a much cheaper service than it would be provided otherwise. From what I've heard of USA hospitals, you dont want to get sick or hurt since they all rip you off and take every last penny. In sweden we can get sick and hurt and we STILL will be able to live a normal life economically speaking. Why is this? Our taxes.

The infrastructure has great use of our, the taxpayers money, as has the police departments, the social services departments, the schools, universities.
Socialism is good. The thought of everyone pitching in and helping those who cant for one reason or another help themselves is a good thought. As long as it is done in a democratic manner. We have a good chance of influencing the politicians which we vote for, and unlike other countries the people who gets the most votes actually do win an election. (Take that Bush!)

I wouldnt mind raising my taxes with a couple of dollars in order to help out the OpenSource evolution. Not to mention, to make it implemented more in the public services. The costs that we could do away with (licenses and MS shit) by making sure that OSS did away with windows and such in our infrastructure could be diverted to the OSS community instead and as thus help everyone out. We probably wouldnt even need a large taxraise.

I so wish that I'm able to metamoderate the parent post.

Its called socialism.

[HanzoSan]

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.

Funding = wrong way to go

[theMightyE]

I'm not so sure this would be a good idea as stated. One of the things that makes open source work as well as it does is that it is started by someone who has the proverbial 'itch' that needs to be scratched, meaning that they wish they had a particular bit of software and so head out to create it themselves. If enough other folks share the same 'itch' they start helping out with testing, adding new features, documentation, etc. The people who have the commitment and skill to make the biggest difference rise to the top and good software is made.

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.

Actually...

[qtp]

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".