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Economist's Take On Open Source Development
An anonymous reader writes "Economist Dean Baker outlines alternative funding mechanisms for software development in a new report called "Opening Doors and Smashing Windows" [PDF Warning], available at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. One proposal is to create a US government-funded Software Development Corps of public software corporations, which compete and produce only free and open source software. Baker estimates that through the resulting lower prices in software and computers, the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year -- all while 20,000 software developers are supported to work specifically on open source projects."
"No, because then the government would order programmers to create an open source intelligent design simulator."
Sounds good to me. And if it sounds good, there's gotta be a catch. What's the catch?
The ransom model works pretty well in RPG communities and is already used for programs, but I don't remember where. What, you may ask, is the ransom model? Joel from Joel on software (who is a much better writer than me), says this about the subject:
Have you ever heard of the ransom model?
In short it works like this: you create some sort of downloadable product and set a date at which a specific amount of money (the ransom) has to be donated. If that amount will be collected before the deadline, the product will be released for free for everyone. If not, the money will be donated to a charity organisation and the product will never be released.
I wonder how this would work for software. It is, after all, a different beast entirely than Dungeons & Dragons books.
Way to link directly to a PDF there, ScuttleMonkey
Those poor bastards never knew what hit 'em.
Since when is it the job of the government to promote open source?
Do we really want the government to actively go about picking winners and losers in entire areas of the worldwide economy?
This is the first thing I've seen that supports the little guy. Software developers triumph, middle class triumphs, the only ones who lose are those trying to sell thier software. If you truly create something innovative people will still purchase it, but the mundane things that everyone needs are just being recreated over and over again for profit. For example spyware blockers and firewalls. These should be free and open because of their great need, its nearly impossible to properly function on the internet without them.
"I Wish I Was Gay Just to Piss Off the Homophobes!" - Kurt Cobain
He wants to take $80-120 billion a year out of the economy and create a new tax payer funded federal agency? This is a good idea?
Last time I checked software and computers weren't expensive at all, certainly not enough that it needs some hair brained solution like this. Talk about a solution in search of a problem... yeesh!
sounds like nazi communism to me.
...sounds more interesting to me. He proposes an "Artistic Freedom Voucher", whereby people would be provided with a voucher for, say, $100, which they could direct to a person engaged in creative work (like writing open source software). This sounds rather nifty, since it would allow folks to "pay" for the projects they find most useful personally.
:-)
Of course, another way for open source programmers to make money is to publish a book. Programming in Java? Give it a look! Think of it as sponsoring an artist
The Army reading list
I don't really see the document listing the impact to the economy if you did this all at once. A lot more than 20,000 programmers are employed writing and supporting software they're trying to phase out.
I have always been a proponent of go with whatever is the best model. Yet it seems that governments all over the world are trying to prop up open source to try and put companies (mostly Microsoft) out of business. If the product is better and the model works - why does the government have to get involved at all?
According to the proposal cited in the /. paraphrase, the government would have to decide which software projects to fund. What reason do we have to believe that the government could better choose how to run software development than the private sector? (just look at Katrina relief for an example of how inefficiently the government uses funds)
I'd rather Microsoft (or some other entity in the private sector) oversees development of important software than the government.
Why wait for a personal voucher, just personally take $100 out of your wallet and give it to the project of your choosing.
"Voucher" is the new monorail.
I guess it is a good thing we don't war against great ideas such as these still then, huh?
See subject for sarcasm.
He wants to take $80-120 billion a year out of the economy and create a new tax payer funded federal agency? This is a good idea?
Last time I checked software and computers weren't expensive at all, certainly not enough that it needs some hair brained solution like this. Talk about a solution in search of a problem... yeesh!
...let's wait for a view or even a publication to counter this view. I will admit I agree with a lot of what the author has mentioned. To what I am skeptical about, I have to say that I have no knowledge. I was a good read though.
Where's that written in the Consitution?
120B/yr saved / 20k new jobs = 6M.
Last I checked most software developers make less then 6M/yr, with overhead, more like 250k. So you're talking about replacing 480K jobs, with 20K jobs. Sounds great to me, they just have to work 24 times as hard. And we can outsource them so we only have to pay them 10k/yr too!
Our local McDonalds REALLY needs someone working there that speaks English, so those 460k unemployed software folks will have jobs waiting for them.
This will of course be moderated as -1 Flamebait: disturbing Slashdot reality distortion field subclause 37 - everything should always be free, and subclause 17 - people that don't get paid love taking my support calls.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I doubt government funds could be appropriated in this fashion. Instead what will happen is this would be treated like any other government contract. Companites, rather then individuals would compete, and skill/quality would be low on the list of requirements.
I am a big open source advocate where I work, and I feel the Apache model has the most merit. Of course projects such as Apache only really succede when they are large enough to attact a large number of developers and companies to support it. As with any open source projects, the vast majority of ASF's projects fail, mainly do to lack of intrest. But they come out with the ocasional gem.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The government runs things so effeciently...such as the DMV. I can't wait for oversized beurocracies to get their hands on developing software. And they move so quickly and effieciently I'll bet software bugs would get corrected within seconds of discovery. ;)
Not to mention the Big Brother oportunities inherent in the government developing software.
True, true... I guess I felt it was the "less evil" of the two proposals. Big government-sponsored companies trying to "do open source"... sounds DoublePlusUnGood to me... lots of UML diagrams would be produced though, I dare say.
The Army reading list
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
Really, thats what Joe Windowsuser is going to think.
Performing sanity checks on your own beliefs is vital in avoiding poisoned koolaid.
...since when is the government concerned about the best interests of the people? The government is just the enforcement arm of the robber barons, make no mistake. These robber barons are only concerned about protecting their wealth. The government will take no action against them, any more than the government of Mexico will take action against the drug cartels--because the government exists to serve them. Ergo, there will be no actions beside the occasional populist sop to thwart the monied men.
More specifically, Microsoft won't like it if the government promotes open source. I fully expect the state-level open source stuff I've heard about recently to be quashed at a federal level as "anticompetitive" or some other stupidity.
"Economist Dean Baker outlines alternative funding mechanisms for software development in a new report called "Opening Doors and Smashing Windows" [PDF Warning]
Off-topic, but in future, will we have a bunch of Open Source warnings, especially for submissions from residents of Massachusetts?
US government-funded Software Development Corps?
I thought they were called graduate schools?
Seriously, it's already there in the form of graduate schools. Just up the funding of graduate school science programs rather than create an artificial agency.
The last thing the free software community needs is the US government fucking it over with beauracracy and red tape and project proposals and grants, etc. The best thing the governments of the world can do to encourage and promote the free software movement is to officially adopt open standards (open protocols, open document formats, etc) for all official business. Don't screw over a good thing by trying to play parent to it. We get by fine on our own thanks.
11*43+456^2
Sounds like more wastfull govement spending. I'm all for opensouce, But why make another govenment agaency That Does Nothing. Let A privite company do it or a person.
Bring it on to all the Speeling Nazis!!
Since when is it the job of the government to promote open source?
Do we really want the government to actively go about picking winners and losers in entire areas of the worldwide economy?
While I agree that free and open source software is fine without the governments help (in fact, we don't need it or want it), since when is it the job of the government to enforce and impose restrictions on copying for the sake of large media companies??
This first paragraph ....
Copyrights and patents are forms of government intervention in the market that are relics of the medieval guild system. They are an outdated and inefficient means to support creative and innovative work in the 21s t century. These government-granted monopolies lead protected software to sell at prices that are far above the free-market price. In most cases, in the absence of copyright and patent protection, software would be available over the Internet at zero cost.
.. blew me away and is probably the most insightfull thing I've ever read in a government publication. What a hero, the author will probably get fired for such blatnet honesty.
"Economist's Take On Open Source Development"
/. anymore when you assume that the ' is an editor's mistake and the story (which you DFR) is about economists taking on that evil communist open source community.
You know you're not new to
Despite the subject dear to most of us, we shouldnt ignore the fact that he is essentially claiming that developed software is free. He is totaly ignoring the costs incured in developping the software, and only accounting for the costs incured in copying it.
In his t-shirt example he is claiming the price of $20, which without doubt is probably 99% manufacuting expenses and remaining 1% design expenses when spread over the first 100.000 copies. However, for software the ratio is the opposite, with 1% material costs (packaging, manual, cd, etc) and 99% design expenses, again spread over the first 100.000 copies or what not.
it is done just like everyone else who contribute to open source.
If the governemnt contributes funds then it must be without strings.
What would make sence, is to simply focus in on development of the applications the government themselves would use and to make this open source on teh grounds that it is the tax payers who have paid for it. If they want to hire open source programmers to do so, then so be it. But to subsidize open source development in general is against the legal scope of the government and contridicts the competitive economic system we are supposed to have.
Open source doesn't need that kind of help from the government.
But in teh spirit and intent of open source, it is within the scope of the government to make use of and even contribute to open source as other do, by contributing code or sponsoring projects of potential use by the governemt themselves.
It is teh ability to create and modify for your use, that makes open source more what the usrs want than software dictated to the user (i.e. proprietary).
So what the hell is a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) community? Sounds distinctly middle eastern...
Oh well, what the hell...
I was looking for a link to http://economist.com/, especially with all the links to escapistmagazine.com That would have been your publication for you.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux, GCC, Python, Tomcat and am posting this from Firefox, but this is such total bullshit on the face of it that you'd have to be either holed up in the Ivory Tower or an open source zealot who just wants to stick it to The Man to think that this is a good idea. 20,000 developers? That's ALL?! Microsoft currently has probably almost that many working for them, so the only thing that I can conclude from this proposal is that it would be an unmitigated disaster for the developer labor market if implemented.
Why not just come out and admit a cold, hard fact: open source software has been an abysmal failure if making a lot of money and keeping a lot of people employed is the goal. This proposal is a blatant admission that open source has not and will not work as a mainstream business model for anything but infrastructure software because that's the only software where support and custom development consulting is a major source of revenue. Can anyone point to solid evidence of desktop apps like cd burners, office suites and things of that nature thriving through support models? I can't seem to find any, and OpenOffice is not a good example because the project would probably implode if Sun pulled out.
Why is it that almost every single major open source projects aimed at software development with great documentation and consistent naming conventions are based on closed source products. Yeah, Classpath and Mono have designs and documentation that rival Sun and Microsoft's products, but that's because they're functional clones of them!
One of the things that I have gotten truly sick of is the hobbyist argument used to defend open source projects in so many cases. Desktop Linux has been maturing along the same timeframe as MacOS X has been in development--I remember seeing the proclamations of its ascension RSN in 1997-1999--and yet it is still very far away in terms of quality and capability. If Windows is "good enough" and Desktop Linux cannot meet or exceed it... any guess what that says about it?
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
"War"? Oh, you probably mean "proxy war", where the US government sponsored assassins, fascist states and terrorists. Though you might possibly be referring to a real war where you had the shame of killing over a million humans in the name of "freedom".
Government paying for free software? send in the troops...
Is it just me or does it seem as though the government has a lot of revenue to lose from this proposition. If the government indeed backs open source software, what ever happens to the tax that big software companies don't pay anymore because of reduced profits? The government is a business like any other in a capitalist economy, it'll watch out for its interests, which sometimes happen to coincide with the interests of the people.
... the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year
Whenever the government says it is going to save consumers money, hold onto your wallets!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WEBSUC.html
The url above is for "The Success of Open Source" by Weber. Another take on open source is by Clayton Christensen in his books on innovation. I highly recommend both.
The thing about open source is that it puts the lie to the notion that people only do things for monetary gain. It is a poisonous notion when it is used as the basis for economic policy. In that light, the notion of massive government subsidies for open source efforts, is ham handed. IMHO, economists and policy makers should make the effort to understand how open source actually works before they propose to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars. I suggest they start with The Bazaar and the Cathedral. It's available for free download.
There is a place for publicly funded research. There is a place for publicly funded open source work. The model for both is probably similar. The idea that private enterprise should fund all research and software development produces bad results. For instance, having drug companies do all medical research means that only profitable drugs are produced. A free cure for cancer won't happen in such a regime. Similarly, pouring money into private corporations to fund research is usually a massive waste of money.
I'm not against public funding; I just don't think that this proposal is sufficiently enlightened to work.
Here's a link to Google's copy of this report in HTML.
Subsidize Microsoft to keep them from over-producing software.
...
Use prison workers to code for 3 cents an hour.
Invade China and free their software development projects.
The possibilities are endless.
"Used to be a time we'd go to war against things such as this communistic/socialistic ideal.."
Used to be we wouldn't accepting a lying bag of shit like Bush as president.
Time have changed.
Consider this:
Physical product/economy -> natural scarcity -> use cost established by free market to fairly allocate resources (capitalism)
Information economy -> NO natural scarcity -> from each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her work (communism)
For those who think the latter doesn't work, consider how the scientific community worked for the last 300 years. Imagine that instead of being freely shared and published, work of every scientist was locked up by the employer/corporation.
This ransom model you speak of and credit to spolsky, is actually called
"THE STREET PERFORMER PROTOCOL" suggested by Bruce Scheiner. Stephan King
tried to implement it for one of his stories, but he failed to do it properly.
Arash
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
If the consumers save 80-120 billion uSD every year, this would mean the govenment in the narrow view may loose sales taxes and profit taxes on all of those billions (asuming people would not spend the money on other things...)
Remember that much US software also sell abroad generating US tax benefits on profit brought home...
It is very unlikely that the US Government would do something like this even though it may help US in the long run... Free software sounds socialistic, and the current Government only believe in pure capitalism...
Since Linux came out almost 15 years ago I have seen so many students wasting their time on writing Linux software instead of finishing their thesis. Bad strategy.
When did the Center for Economic and Policy Research become a branch of the government?
Answer: It's not. It looks like a blue-sky, privately funded, 6-year old non-profit. In fact, from their site, "It is an independent nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, DC. CEPR functions as an economic "truth squad," conducting professional research and getting it out to the media, policy-makers, and advocates."
A "truth squad". Yeah, that sounds like a totally unbiased organization with no agenda whatsoever...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
While his argument about copyrights was genius, I didn't really like the way the conclusion seemed to force a choice between closed software and socialist government. IMHO, we are better off with neither.
Before I'd propose that we communize OSS, why don't we do that to the farmers. There are untold numbers of gardners who would love to be paid for what they grow. Why don't we start paying them $40k/yr to farm. I'm sure we'd see amazing crop output and harldy anyone would starve w/ all the free food...
- nolan eakins
A really bad article by a public school graduate? It doesn't really warrant any comment. Government funded FOSS - I ask you. DARPA? Who said DARPA?
Oh well, what the hell...
> One proposal is to create a US government-funded Software
> Development Corps of public software corporations, which
> compete and produce only free and open source software.
And, of course, which comply with a rapidly-proliferating array of restrictions and regulations, stifling all creativity.
Fortunately, it'll never happen.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
An example of similar thinking.
Doesn't appear to work.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
If he described that as "The Street Performer Protocol", he's wrong. Street performers don't refuse to play if no-one pays them because that just doesn't work. Can you imagine if there was a guy on the street corner with a guitar, completely still, with a sign that said, "give me a dollar and I'll start playing"?
The street-performer method is what open-source currently has: a person goes out that and starts doing stuff, hoping that people will take note and grant money out of appreciation. This is wildly different from a ransom model.
Aside from a probable recession and the loss of thousands of jobs, there's the bureaucracy and the politics. You thought Microsoft fixed bugs slowly, but the government is always paralyzed by indecision. Also, in any field in which politics is involved, rights get killed off for political gain. If you want to be able to do what you want with your computer, this is not a good idea.
Open Source is a failure. No, that's not me saying it, that's what the report says. Once you get past the rhetoric, it's essentially saying that Open Source cannot survive in the marketplace, and needs government protection.
Bullshit. Linux came about during the very decade that everyone said no one could compete against the Microsoft monopoly. It succeeded where BeOS, OS/2 and DR-DOS could not. I'm also seeing Firefix usage zooming. OpenOffice is getting noticed. And of course, the web belongs to Apache. Open Source *IS* succeeding! If you think otherwise it's because you're trying to judge its success by the failures of others. That's not how the game works.
If government wants to help, then it can help by getting out of the way! Government can stop standardizing on proprietary formats. Government can stop handing out software patents. Government can stop recognizing mouse click licensing. Government could liberalize copyright and abolish the DMCA.
Whenever you hear someone say "I'm from the government and I'm here to help," run the other way!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
He wants to take $80-120 billion a year out of the economy and create a new tax payer funded federal agency? This is a good idea?
$80-120 billion is his estimated savings for consumers.
When you save money by using free software instead of paying for it, is that money taken out of the economy, or money that is free for you to spend on something else. Think really hard about this. Yeesh indeed. You're the first person I've met (besides my ex-girlfriend) who thinks that saving money is a bad thing.
The tax collected is always less than what people are paying to buy the software, plus the time they spend reading licensing, monitoring lawful use, worrying about return policies, throwing away packaging, and all of the other costs and maintenance commercial software typically faces.
Since people no longer have to buy the software, it is like giving every user a tax credit and lowering the barrier to entry, allowing computers to be even cheaper, more accessible and more widespread. Everyone has more money left over to buy other things, which generate tax revenue, or they save it, which increases the savings rate and allows cheaper lending. Either way, the money doesn't disappear, it simply gets redirected into other businesses, so that they experience a boost. (Not only consumers would benefit from OSS, it will simplify life for businesses and government too. )
In the meantime, this would help increase the use of software and push people towards broadband. People would be freer to try out new and different things, and so they would. They wouldn't be stuck using things that don't meet their requirements. (Well, at least until some lobbyists mandate that rootkits, spyware and bloat cannot be taken out, or some other betrayal of consumers' interests happens.)
Turning it around: What ever happens to the R&D tax credits the government gives to the large software companies? Do you think those will be missed?
In most cases, in the absence of copyright and patent protection, software would be available over the Internet at zero cost.
If it were available at all. There is definitely justification for copyright law, and that is to ensure that you can sell a work without fear of people ripping off your work. The only problem with copyright is the extend that they've taken it to, such as making it illegal to crack DRM. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with copyright itself though.
In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
....the government would recoup its annual $2 billion appropriation to the program and US consumers would save $80-120 billion each year -- all while 20,000 software developers are supported to work specifically on open source projects.
Huh? Seems like your math doesn't work out at all. Exactly how do I recover my $500,00 in campaign donations? I mean, c'mon guys, be serious.
- Lobbyist for Some Big Company, Esq.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The nine worst words in business are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help." I'm sorry, but the last thing I want gumming up the Open Source model is some government yo-yo oversight organization. I don't want some dipstick bureaucrat deciding which projects get funded and which ones go hungry. All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds. This is the same disease that has plagued NASA. If this organization hires engineers-- do you honestly think you're going to get the cream of the crop? I know Alan Cox would really resent working for the Feds. So would the Rasterman. I would hate it (and I'm not even an engineer).
DARPA offers prizes-- that's great. Ongoing funding or bureaucratic employment is the last thing OSS needs.
davejenkins.com |
What would you rather have, more open-source software or free blowjobs?
Copyright is established and enforced by governments. If government were truly uninvolved, the free software community would not be "fine" because we'd have no way to enforce the terms of any of our copyright licenses. Without the threat of enforcing one's rights under law, I doubt that proprietary software distributors would refrain from distributing proprietary variants of free software programs. To put a fine point on it, Microsoft (today's 800 lb. gorilla of the proprietary software world) would be able to distribute a proprietary set of GNU programs. Users would be in almost the same trap they are now with proprietary software—users might be able to distribute verbatim copies of programs but users would be denied any way to inspect or modify the binaries distributed to them and the entire free software community would end up treating all proprietary software businesses like charities. This is not a good trade; we would lose far more than we gain.
Patent law is established and enforced by governments too. Patent-holding organizations (most notably IBM because IBM holds the most patents) would not like that situation either because their patents would have no value. In this hypothetical situation, there would be nothing to stop anyone from dealing in formerly patented ideas. I only mention this because I think it would mean that there would be large numbers of people and organizations opposed to government doing away with copyright and patent regimes.
Digital Citizen
This is such a great idea, you know the government will never do it.
Whenever the government gets involved in franchises, subsidies, etc. the end result is a government-created monopoly.
Just remember that the government is a big stick, wielded by those in political power. A government monopoly is not sustained through economic production, but rather through the forced expropriation of taxpayer money to prop it up.
Mine is Good
Do you think the government would pass up an opportunity like this to plant code in our computers to rat on us? ..... it up your ...
you can take that idea and
One needs to realize that, currently OSS (specifically, GNU/Linux) is not targeted towards the typical computer user. If the government were to write their own open source operating system (presumably targeted towards the typical user), it would have a different audience, hence it would be a fundamentally different product. This could change Linux in ways I would not like to see.
Also, on a somewhat different note, this guy really doesn't know that much about software development. From my limited experience, Eric Raymond's distinction between The Cathedral and The Bazaar styles of software development hold true. If the government were to begin writing OSS, they would be producing a product written using the "Cathedral" style, which, again, would result in a fundamentally different product. Again, this is not something I would like to see.
On the plus side, I am guessing many avid Linux users and developers would agree with me, and Linux distributions targeted to more advanced users would still be around.
http://www.wbtllc.com/~owens/.
This is something that I have tried to do in Colorado for nearly 4 years. What is interesting is the response from the Gov., some of the reps, and even the Denver mayor. All of them are afraid to change even though it costs them nothing (in the state of Colorado). MS has no real operations and as such, can not hurt our state. Yet, they could have helped HP, Sun, and IBM who are all VERY LARGE EMPLOYERS here.
At this time, I greatly admire the mass. gov. and his staff for doing what is right, and basically fighting against MS. Long term, the state will benefit from it. More importantly, MS will support the format by the time they start.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and produced by the IRS
-- Back to the shadows again...
1) Of that $2 billion for this agency, over half would likely go to government bloat and other non-development work. Which means you're splitting less then $1bil to 20k developers. That sticks your mean pay at $50k/year. How many senior developers are you going to hold onto for $50k/year?
2) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
3) The government determines the projects that get worked on.
4) You can't fire incompetent people in the government.
5) The government would be in a great place to ensure all funded projects (VOIP, Operating Systems, Communication tools, database engines, etc) would have some sort of back door or sniffing system.
6) You can't fire incompetent... you get the idea.
7) Encryption technology can not be exported, it would be a felony to export government software with built in security and any related code would need to be protected (IE, not open source)
8) The government could put "closed source" barriers on any software it wanted due to security concerns (see 5, 7)
9) The government always goes with the cheapest vendor. The nice thing about the free market is that consumers are free to chose the best product.
10) The impact on the economy would be huge. If this project were successful (meaning that the gov back agency released acceptable free software) you would quickly decimate Microsoft, Oracle, Novell, Sun, Google, Adobe, and other major developer employers. While I don't imagine the big players would die off, the smaller players who have products that are targeted for OS replacement by the gov would be driven out of business and all of the companies would likely reign in their budgets, which means letting developers go. It would result in a mass devaluing of code writing jobs (huge supply, limited demand).
11) It would reduce consumer choice. As professional product development companies drop out of existence consumers lose options and eventually wind up with a single option.
12) Governmental controls and oversight would stifle development and push more cutting edge development overseas.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Used to be a time we'd go to war against things such as this communistic/socialistic ideal....
Yeah, fuck those guys who want things like public utilities and infrastructure. If I want to drive on a road or walk on a sidewalk, it better not be funded by everbody for the common good and all that hippie BS. Our society would fall apart!
Why does the government need to be involved in open source development at all? Yes, they've funded it before, but why should they unless it's the cheapest, simplest way for the government to get the software it needs?
There doesn't seem to be anything that the government doesn't feel the need to involve itself in unless the voters are strongly against it (and often that doesn't matter either).
Open Source develop you!!!
None of you are concerned about government backed software? I for one would not trust the privacy of a government funded operating system. The gov't's possibilities would become endless and possibly totally hidden from the public.
Things like this:
Your Rights Online: Carnegie Mellon Resists FBI Tapping Requirement
would all of a sudden be a non issue -- there would be no preventing it. As brilliant an idea this is, and it is a great one, i dont think the privacy conscious public would back it.
source code released by the government would probably have a lot of black lines though it.
I think we should be hiring economists to figure out how to make open source profitable, but using the private sector is just politically impossible. It's difficult enough to get people to accept open source as a model, the last thing you need to do is link it directly to communism or socialism.
Instead we should make open source as profitable as possible for the private sector, forget the public sector. Also how the hell is it good for an economy to save 200 billion in consumer spending? what the hell is this economist on crack? I completely understand what hes saying from a socialist perspective, but America is as far to the right as the scale can handle, to think we can even entertain these ideas in the current environment is futile and stupid.
Honestly, a better idea would be for private companies to pool their resources and fund R&D collectively, by forming an OPEC like group to take on Microsoft, an Open Source Commission of some sort which would be IBM, Novell, Sun, Redhat, Google, and any other company that wants to fund open source, and collectively they can throw 2 billion a year of their own money into the pot to fund it.
On the state level we can also implement the socialist ideas if the individual states would like to pay for it. You could try it in california and massachusettes, start with the most liberal progressive socialist states and don't think about it in texas. Google and other companies can also fund college scholarships and do the summer of code things in a more collective international fashion. Governments could give tax deductions for companies which use and support open source software also.
Let's start by having the Government pay only once for free software. Software produced due to government funding used to be public domain. Now it can only be used by the U.S. government and the contractor still owns the software. Stop allowing the government to pay for private industry to create private goods.
If I could buy stock in open office I would.
If our government acted for the good of the people, maybe this would happen. But I think we all know that the corporations come first, and the people are somewhere further down.
Steve.
Wikipedia article on Marginal Cost
We need an open source software stock market. If you have software like mozilla or open office, which is either profitable or valueable, we should be able to buy stock, bonds or shares, and gain votes as a result. Transgaming had a good model, but we need to create a market and make it profitable to own shares.
http://216.239.37.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=de&u=ht tp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Economic_Pol icy_Research&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsite:wikipedia.org %2Bcenter%2Bfor%2Beconomic%2Band%2Bpolicy%2Bresear ch%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
m ission
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_property_bubble
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens'_Debate_Com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_security
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_propert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
Your post is rightfully moderated as flamebait, but since your history is wrong I'll try to correct your misunderstanding: the open source movement started over a decade after the free software movement did (the GNU Project, which started the free software movement, began in 1984; the Open Source Initiative, which started the open source movement, began in 1997). So, if there's any "parasitic hijacking" going on, it would have to be the open source movement's doing.
The Free Software Foundation, not the OSI, writes the most important and popular licenses in the free software community—most notably the GNU General Public License, but also the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the GNU Free Documentation License. If these licenses are "open source" licenses at all it is only because they happen to meet the Open Source Definition. Merely complying with a set of terms is nothing compared to writing the licenses and building a community. But these licenses were all written explicitly to pursue software freedom (as the language of all of these licenses make abundantly clear). In fact, both released versions of the GPL were written before there was an open source movement. Software freedom for users is a framing of ethical issues which the open source movement doesn't engage in.
But I prefer to think of the two movements having different philosophies and understand the philosophies for what they are. This way I can better understand the choices the organizations that define the terms "free software" and "open source" make and place them in historical context.
Digital Citizen
Open source is sort of proof that it would be available...
But having said that, I agree with your post.
The feds can't copyright things, at least not in the United States. Works of the federal government or its employees in their official capacity are in the public domain. Consider the Agricultural Research Service, or NOAA, or the various military archives.
By that same token, any work of a federal agency will be public domain.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The government will never be able to figure out what to support and how much to pay. Since software is a broad category, and since software changes so quickly, the govt will be caught off-guard. The project will start off with a small budget but will ballon to billions of dollars for stuff that the free market can provide. This will be different than CIA, DEA, or Department of Homeland Security or any other initiative that starts out small, costing a few million to a few hundread million, and then ballons into billions of dollars. The top 15 software companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and others, spend billions of dollars per year on R&D. The government will not be able to match even a small slice of that.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
And extremely flawed analysis.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Can you imagine if there was a guy on the street corner with a guitar, completely still, with a sign that said, "give me a dollar and I'll start playing"?
Some of 'em would do a better if they had a sign that said "give me a dollar and I'll stop playing."
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
I didn't RTFA, but I like the idea -- even though I am a libertarian-leaning Republican. I've always considered it ridiculous for the govt to send billions of dollars to MS for Office when, for a fraction of that amount, they could help develop a good, free alternative. Everybody wins -- except MS, of course. The govt saves money, and the general public is freed from the shackles of MS proprietary formats.
OK, now maybe I'll RTFA.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
...is more government spending and/or intervention.
Hilarious. Please mod up!
Most of the money is funded into companies which lose money, or into wars, or taxes, or just other bankers, stock brokers and rich people. So yes the money does constantly change hands among the rich.
How to beat M$ monopoly that forces customers to pay for their software? It is easy. Force EVERYBODY (not only potential customers) to fund the development of OS SW. Fundation is easy - use taxes... It is nice solution (since I'm the programmer) but I have to admit that it is not a fair solution to those who will pay for development and never tak advantage of SW that was developed from their work...
Don't you think? Am I wrong?
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
He seems to reject the obvious solution with an astonishing piece of solecism: No IPR protection means noone has to buy copies of software, hence noone will want to buy software-engineering.
I hate stupid lefties almost as much as I hate stupid righties.
determine who gets the cash. Start a freshmeat like system when programs are rated by users, or by # of downloads, or by project activiey. Not hard, really.
Hello snowball appropriation, this is Bialzibub, do you really think you have a chance of ever making it through here let alone the Microsoft funded lobby fud hell that is Washington DC!
Terror...a Linux distro done entirely in ADA...goons sneaking DRM into OpenBSD...releases put off twenty-five years only to be killed for lack of funding...ex-FEMA directors needing a job, and being appointed head of the project...the fortunes-o file censored because taxpayers will protest their tax dollars going to dirty limericks...Microsoft manipulating the whole show with campaign contributions in the background...all security features replaced by color-coded virus-threat level...political leaders who can't name three other countries being the provider of my next version of X86config...man pages multiplying 300x in length to make room for the beaurocratic mumbo-jumbo and then getting classified as government secrets...
I'm going to close my web browser and wait twelve hours for this story to scroll off the page and then later I can pretend I never saw it. It was just a bad dream.
"All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds." Sounds like you're a bit too familiar with the academic world. Nearest I can tell, the "principle investigators" spend the vast majority of their time talking up the importance of their work in an effort to get funds.
This is basically how the government works, you politick and network or else you will not succeed. Anyone doing real work will not be successful because they don't spend enough time advocating themselves. This is also true in the the corporate environment, the bigger the company is, the more you have to politick and network to get things done and the less real work gets done. The difference is that in the business world, these inefficiencies will eventually get bad enough that the company will no longer be competitive (except through anti-competive practices, usually, but not always, involving government intervention).
So with the proposal mentioned in the summary, it would probably start out as $2 billion, and have good results. Then as time went on, more bureaucracy would develop, managers would become entrenched, and the cost would balloon as quality would diminish. Soon, no good software would ever be released, and it would essentially turn into a welfare program for developers. This is the point NASA is at today. The US military is not far behind, but the government seems to be intent on tearing down the established military complex and rebuilding it from scratch, hoping to start over at the point were it is relatively efficient.
I'm very seldom moved to post on Slashdot, but this article did it.
The nonsense starts with the author's blithe assertion that an asymtotic-to-zero cost of software distribution over the Internet implies zero cost of production, and proceeds from there.
In fact there are lots of goods that have a high cost to produce the first copy and near-zero-cost to produce the second copy, but any self-described 'economist' who uses that cost pattern as an excuse to ignore the production cost of the first copy is exhibiting severe brain damage.
The little that is true in this paper (the argument on the high costs of IPR) just gets overwhelmed by the tide of toxic nonsense. If anyone asks *me* what I think of this government-funding scheme, it'll get both barrels...
>>esr>>
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name= News&file=article&sid=1692
Let see, hire 20,000 programs to write crappy code
then save 20 or so billions - but in reality, will cost another $40 or so billions because of crapshit untest code.
I did RTFA. And although I was quite impressed with how the author grasps many of the underlying issues, their entanglement and complexity I was bluffed by sheer naievete(sp?) of the underlying economic assumptions and the their theoretical underpinnings.
He documents quite accurately how 'IPR' works and how it effects the development of software and the *costs* this form of development has for society, yet these *costs* are not the subject of the mathetical extrapolations which he engages in. The mathematics used in this essay as well as the entirety of latent definitions of value/waste present in the text are based on a woefully inadequate naieve economic understanding.
I am not an economist and I have never formally studied economics but the assumptions at work in the economic understanding revealed in his terminology and his calculations are baffling to say the least. If such is what is taught to students of economy is it any wonder our economy is so supremely fucked.
It is a shame that otherwise good arguments and a good grasp of the complexities involved are so thoroughly underminded by such sophmoric misuse of mathematics (with their appeal to 'empirical reality' ie. facts) and woefully inept econcomic theory.
The profound weakness of the underlining economic theory at work in his paper is that each and every argument can be turned to it's opposite and equally proven. He states that if all software were available at 0 cost and freely modifiable that there would be no duplication of software-ie. no one would bother righting something already written. Anyone who has opened their eyes knows that the reality directly contradicts such nonsense. He forgets that where economy is understood merely as a system of incentives/disincentives, and that such are purely monetary in nature, that in order to prevent people from duplicating programs one would have to a) pay them not to do so or b) not pay them for having done so(two sides of same coin). But this negates his complaint against unnecessary duplication of software because those who do duplicate software are being paid to do so. In totality the economic assumptions underlying this essay are fundamentally incapable of grasping what FOSS is and how it works.
So at once the author is capable of providing a rather damning indictment of IPR and he succeeds in painting an accuarate picture of the *costs* of this regime, but he is incapable of grasping that which he wishes to see as an alternative to IPR, namely FOSS. His argument is that one can substitute FOSS for IPR by creating public corporations which employ FOSS programmers. In so doing he ignores that it was the contention of the conditions of employment as a software developer which gave birth to FOSS.
What FOSS is, is only relevant within the terms of reference which constitute the status quo. How FOSS is, is an insight into that which already is no longer captured in our grasp of the status quo-for it is different, different in the sort of way which makes a difference for those engaged in it.
Ok, so let me get this right. The American goverment is going to help provide opensource software to help itself save money........wouldn't this open source software also be able to be used by any other goverment?
Not really into economics but if all the goverments are able to use the software that you paid to make and they didn't, where's the saving?
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
Open Source developers take on YOU!
1) Of that $2 billion for this agency, over half would likely go to government bloat and other non-development work. Which means you're splitting less then $1bil to 20k developers. That sticks your mean pay at $50k/year. How many senior developers are you going to hold onto for $50k/year? ...
Business has bloat, too. Marketing, accounting, advertising, management, legal department,
You don't have to agree to a license to use a GPL-licensed program. Those who possibly had to agree to it are those who gave it to you in the first place.
You only need to agree to it if you want to *redistribute* it.
Since when did truth become a form a bias?
Is that thunder or the sound of a thousand corporate lobbyists heading for Washington?
I think that a more real-world and short-term way to finance free software is to use advertising, this works at least for little projects that are nice enough to have a solid user base. I wrote an article about this model. For the future I hope to see a good micropayments system so that developers will be able to ask for some cent per download in addition or as alternative to advertising.
that we are basicly forced to comment on TFA before we actually read it.
I'm serious, my fellow Slashdoters. Take this article for example. It's a 20 pages PDF. It would take me ca. 1 hour to read it through 'with proper understanding'. Then I would need at least a day to think it over and come up with further insights.
Unfortunately, the comments to an article are opened immediately. The result is that people who comment early and often, who comment without READING TFA do drown down all later comments. There is no point for late commers to comment at the bottom of the thread. At that point the discussion has usually already moved to the next 'newsbite du jour'.
In a perfect world we would get informed about the article first. Then there would be an commenting embargo period to RTFA. Only then would the comments open to allow commenting for everyone who at that point did read TFA. That's how scientific seminars do work. Everyone gets the paper copy before the seminar, so that they have time to study it.
Slashdot is an instant gratification world. It copies the worst of TV. Just like the awful 24h news cycle is filled with 30s sound bites of junkformation.
My conclusion is that the present form of Slashdot comments does not facilitate an informed discussion. It's merely an exercise in Frist Psoting and +1:Funny'ing around.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
What a trashy paper. The author starts out with predjudices and conclusions, and goes from there. He never even tries to provide a basis for his conclusions. He compounds it with stupid statements.
"This is a result of the fact that IPR protection leads to unnecessary duplication, as developers have substantial incentive to produce software that simply replicates the function of existing software." He talks about innovation, yet he views efficiency as leading to exactly one (G.I.) version of everything. He should apply his IPR theories to Hollywood's type of software. One book, one movie, one song, and one TV show should be enough for everyone, and priced at the marginal cost of production. Any more would be unnecessary duplication.
"One of the most basic principles in economics is that efficiency is maximized when products sell at their marginal cost of production." Since when? The principle of free market economies is that prices move to their free market levels, duh. If those prices match costs, the producers soon go bankrupt and sources of investment for new products dry up.
I've worked my whole career in software, and made a lot of innovations. Many times I wanted to contribute to open software, but I didn't work for an institution or on the public dole. I had to keep my nose to the grindstone doing the things that benefited my employer, not the world. My employment contracts further restricted me from doing open software on my own time in the evenings. The fairness of that sounds dubious at first, but when one thinks of the conflicts of interest that might arise it seems wise.
I've always thought that the greatest weakness in the open software movement is that only a tiny fraction of the software savy people in the world can contribute. The rest need to feed their families by working for ordinary for-profit entities.
We have already a working OSS-bounty-system in use http://www.opensourcexperts.com/. Many aspects could very well be improved but a solution like this would create a market- or bazar-like place for sofware improvements.
If the government/administration really wants to support software development, it can double the bounties for example. I would not follow with the voucher-idea because vouchers are free and you don't have to think on how to spend them.
Maybe a BRAZILIAN government funded program?
I'm sure the first thing our current government wants to do is set up a government program to compete against the corporations to save people money. NOT.
So we can pay 2 Billion in taxes to get flaky software with no support! Kickin'!!!
A "truth squad". Yeah, that sounds like a totally unbiased organization with no agenda whatsoever
They probably do have all sorts of biases, but you're going to have to come up with better evidence than their claim that they're interested in finding the truth.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I've always thought that this makes sense. It's really no different than a public works project, such as building a highway, water treatment plant, or anything else that is used by virtually everyone in the economy, indirectly if not directly. As some posters have pointed out, this is already happening informally, and perhaps is good enough, as certainly we have software to prove it. But, having funds directly available and aggregating some of the work would likely be useful.
Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen. Free markets are not necessarily the most efficient markets.
If the government can save its own (i.e. the taxpayers) money internally by providing more explicit support (programmers and consultants) for FOSS that is a win for everyone except some proprietary software vendors. It should not (double) count fringe benefits, such as benefits to non government users of FOSS.
I agree however that there are more things government can do, like make it difficult to have employment contracts that forbid FOSS development while on a companies payroll, as well as software patent negation.
That sounded almost reasonable to me, why am I posting it on slashdot..
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Does your macroeconomics textbook say otherwise?
There are sound economic reasons to subsidise infrastructure, as the level of infrastructure that is profitable to create is less than the optimal level for a society. Mostly because a cheap or free infrastructure promotes free trade.
One could argue that at least some kind of software is infrastructure, more specifically, communication software in a broad sense, and the theoretical economic arguments for government involvement apply there as well.
Take a look at their website, and they do appear to have some left-of-center tendencies. They talk up the housing bubble, defend the economic effectiveness of Pres. Hugo Chavez, and reject the IMF's mantra of "privatization, deregulation, and free trade".
I like them already.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This is a rebuttal to "Opening Doors and Smashing Windows: Alternative Measures for Funding Software Development", a white paper by Dean Baker, dates October 2005, and published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, with which I have deep fundamental disagreement. - - - You know, it's been a long time since I took an economics class. But I did take a few, and got a degree in economics. The author of this piece has, it appears to me, never taken one. Or, if he did, he may have decided that the poli-sci classes were more fun. Perhaps he thought Marx and Lenin were Groucho and John, not Karl and Vladimir. He has a PhD in Economics, so I can only assume his article is intentionally disinformative. I have a LOT of problems with this ... even the first few pages. First of all, he proposes that the government create a "Software Development Corps" to create new software, and release that software to the public domain. Imagine the DMV workers reassigned to coding in Java, with all the drive and motivation of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the incentive to win customers of the U.S. National Archives.
That is not the worst part of his proposal: He suggest the government stop protecting patent and copyright owners from infringements of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) 'because it is inefficient' for distribution of the value of the goods. Substitute "Personal Property Rights" (PPRs) for IPRs in his argument and see how it feels. Think of apartment buildings instead of software products.
He believes the owners of IPRs have a monopoly, and that the monopoly only makes sense if it "provides incentive to innovate". Where do I begin? They don't have a monopoly, any more than the owner of the film "Top Gun" has a monopoly on any movie about flying. Exactly the opposite is true: for example, the existence of the copyright on the successful film "Top Gun" provides the incentive for other movies about flying / personal conflict / close relationships, such as "The Aviator", "FireFox" etc. Arrrgggg... [O.K. ... analogy #2: the existence of an apartment building as a successful, commercial, private property enterprise gives an incentive for someone else to build an apartment building with similar or different features that are attractive to renters.]
Monopolies, by nature, have no incentive to innovate. A good example of a bad monopoly is the garbage collection monopoly of most municipalities. The contracting firm pays fees to the municipality, for which it receives a monopoly, and the right to collect fees (and garbage) from residents under the control of the municipality. Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in unincorporated areas of a county have the unique experience of 'competition' and 'choice' for garbage collection services. One container once a week for $50/quarter? how about two container twice a week for $75/quarter? how about one container every two weeks for $25/quarter? Is there an incentive for me to reduce the packaging waste I produce each week if i can save money? Hmmmmm. But, I digress.
Cable television is a good example of a municipal monopoly, but not a perfect one. Not everyone in the municipality is required to have cable television, and there are alternatives providing competitive choices (antenna or dish). The reason the cable franchise was granted was to encourage the cable provider to build the infrastructure necessary to deliver cable television to each home.
The author misses the entire point of the Open Software movement, that there is NOT a need for government intervention and sponsorship of software developers. There are already free and open software that will already do what the author suggests. The government [or industry, or individuals] could certainly discover a desired feature missing from software, and commission the programmers to create that feature. If the software was IPR protected, the IPR owner could decide whether or not to do the work; if the software was Open Software, a variety of programmin
Unlike the Darpanet => Internet thing, law and publically funded development today would be subject to meddling lobbyists like those from MS and Oracle. Would bankers insist on free banking software? Would Chicanos insist on bilingual software nationwide? If it's governmental, do we need a quota on the race and gender of the coders? Are the coders civil servants? If it had been this way in the past, would we have ever gone beyond COBOL? Or would we be using ADA?
On the other hand, it could have turned out more like NIH than the Post Office. And both government and private industry sequenced the genome.
If software were governmental, would the coders be able to get Congress to quit screwing around with Daylight Savings Time? Leave it be for a few years!
I18N == Intergalacticization
Facts are facts, but I'm quite sure that my "truth" and theirs are entirely different things.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Um, governments are an active part of the marketplace, aren't they? They buy *lots* of software, at prices that are set by their suppliers. In other words, the proprietary software industry is already suckling at the government teat to the tune of billions/year, and this spending has questionable benefits for the government and the taxpayers.
Some people in this thread seem to think that if the government buys OSS software instead of proprietary software, this somehow implies a government takeover of OSS projects, formations of massive civil-service bureaucracies and government departments to control OSS code production, and a soviet-style monopoly of software packages. These peoples' brains have clearly been addled by 1960s-era propaganda and really bad comic books. Pay them no more attention than you would a child who asks what would happen if a dinosaur attacked your city. Smile, mention something about laser death rays, tuck them into bed, and wish them sweet dreams.
Anyway, this is not a welfare program for OSS, nor is it Big Brother trying to exert regulatory control over the software industry. It is nothing more than a way for government to buy its software at a better price. Except that it has the added benefit that *everyone* ultimately gets the software at a better price, so the benefit to citizens is doubled.
The "government" quote on copyrights and patents, for one thing, as it totally ignores the author's rights to his creation
I think I want to take issue with this, but I need to understand the context. To what quote are you referring?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I think we need to also focus on helping those who are weaker or poorer among us. I support any idea which through the private sector can help the third world. I support microfinance, microcredit, and economic development for the third world. I'm for fair trade, but once again, even if I'm for all helping build up third world economies, the reason I'm for it is because it makes the world better, and because it helps the economy. It's all about how we go about doing it, you sure as hell wont get anywhere with charity, unions, or old communist/socialist ideas. The socialist era is dead for good, if you want to help the world then support global fair trade, buy your tea from the third world, go petition and demand that starbucks sell fair trade tea, and form a lobbying commitee to convince congress to support fair trade. How do you think China has so much power? they lobby politicians so that politicians support China's development, and if you want to solve the problem of AIDs in Africa, you have to solve the problem of poverty by actually removing sanctions, debt, and barriers which prevent Africa from joining the WTO. There is really no excuse why Africa cannot joint he WTO if China can join it.
Finally, if you believe in all the stuff you are saying, theres the koyoto protocol, theres carbon credits, there are many ways to make it profitable to protect and improve life instead of destroy and reduce quality of life. If you want to play economist, focus on improving quality of life. If you want to have an economy which works at its best, the way to have the best working economy is to have the economy which produces the highest quality of life. If by going to work my life got better and better, and I could buy better and better things, or if computers made it so my work became easier and easier to the point where I could put on some sunglasses with a computer inside and do my work while I shop and eat dinner at a resturant, then we are getting somewhere. Africa can support a lot of industries, the clothing industries, the music industry, the arts, and a lot of other stuff which would improve quality of life. Some of our toys could come from African companies, and if we could get a good movie industry or film industry from Africa, and a strong music and other cultural industries, it would be great for the global economy.
We see how China allows us to have all this cheap stuff from Walmart, African goods would be even cheaper, and we'd all win. So yes I think we should give every living person a job if they want one, and I see no reason for people to be starving and dying of preventable diseases when they can be hired or start businesses of their own from which we can own stock in and get rich off of.
It's just a matter of getting from point A to point B. Right now the focus is on China, but eventually China will become a superpower which threatens the US and Europe, and when China becomes too strong this only leaves India and Africa, perhaps and perhaps South America. Ideally we'd want to get South America but politically its impossible. So yes, I do think we need to focus the economy on sustainable growth.
This is the stupidest, most ridiculous idea I have ever heard. These must be liberals who want a piece of the action.
Name one thing that the government has successfully achieved besides the military and wasting our money
The government does not belong in the open source area. It will no longer be open. We will be forced to pay for the software whether we want it or not. This is absurd.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
In his weekly economic reporting reviews Baker is a regular advocate of allowing unlimited numbers of computer programmers into the country to drive down the wages of software engineers:
He regularly overstates the political power of software engineers, and singles them out despite the fact that H-1B visas explicitly target the profession. He doesn't seem to understand the practice or business of software engineering particularly well. It's unfortunate because much of his analysis regarding the stock bubble and housing bubble is accurate.
The fact is that very few software developers actually benefit from software patents and copyrights. The vast majority of developers work for someone else. Any patents and copyrights from the software they develop goes to their employer, be it a corporation, an individual entrepreneur or even an educational institution. What I like about these suggestions is they allow more of the benefits to go to the developers themselves. We should try to find other models that provide greater rewards for those who do the work of actually developing the software.
First of all, since when is the software market a natural monopoly? What about open source, what about IBM solutions, what about Google, AutoCAD, etc, etc.
Having the government set prices is always dumb. See North Korea.
Monopolies aren't a bad thing. If a company performs so well that no one else wants to compete with them then consumers are getting a good deal. If the company slacks off and doesn't perform well then competitors will enter the market place.
If a company breaks the law then they should be punished. But companies should never be punished or regulated just because they are a monopoly.
wow you are dumb