Source Code Dispute in Boston's Big Dig

JoshuaDFranklin writes "Boston's 'Big Dig' is famously long-running and over budget as noted before on Slashdot. But now Computerworld is reporting that a Software Ownership Battle Adds $10M to Cost of 'Big Dig'. The legal dispute was over whether Massachusetts had the right to share Transdyn source code with Honeywell, causing $2.72 million in damages and $7.2 million in costs of a four-month delay in the project."

Comments

Re:this is so miniscule compared to total cost- Fp

[photonic]

This is just one reason why governments should pay only for Free Software with taxpayer dollars...

I think this is not really a case to bring up the whole open source debate. The application is probably too specific (a traffic management system for tunnels) that open sourcing it wouldn't have helped society too much (any geek here with a tunnel in his backyard?). It looks much more like a case where the government failed to put proper clauses in the contract from the beginning. If they knew beforehand that a different company would be able to win the contract for the second phase, than the possible transfer of the code should have been in the contract for the first phase. Just a typical contract screw up.

You missed the point entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

The Big Dig wasn't meant to make our commute any less arduous, it wasn't meant to educate our children, it wasn't meant to be anything other than a huge public works project which would inevitably become corrupted and suffer huge cost overruns- check out the history of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The whole point of the Big Dig was to free up the land where the above ground artery ran. This is a huge, nearly priceless benefit for Boston. Not only does Boston regain several billion of dollars in downtown real estate- but it re-attaches the North end and Longwharf to the rest of the city. Cut off from the highway, those neighborhoods were difficult and unpleasant to get to, and severely devalued by the big ass highway running right past them. The benefit will be to make a more livable, more walkable city, with a downtown worth visiting.