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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."
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.
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?
...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?
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!
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
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
> 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.
Yeah, because there's no such thing as bloated, inefficient private-sector software companies.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
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
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.
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...
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.
Poor Bastards? The Economist?
Am I the onlny one who got the pun?
If I was trying to make a serious point, this would be the absolute last place I would try to make it.
If you like I can smartass your argument too, i.e. which of the bloated, profiteering, hated oil companies is getting replaced by lean, mean companies that are preferred by customers?
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.
One reason it didn't work for the communists was bad communication. I had a boss that had done work in the early eighties there. He said that there was no reason for someone to share info; it was better for the boss of e.g. a university or company to build their own little mini-empires. With the net and rules for organizations, that might be avoided this time.
I think another problem would be the "NASA effect", when good people get old and couldn't move anywhere since there was no other place to go, then started to stay around for the paycheck. Or whatever it was that happened to NASA in the Shuttle era, forward.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
What's the catch?
The catch is that someone has to decide who gets the money. Even if it escapes overt empire-building and fraud, it risks becoming an ivory tower where lots of cool propsals are generated to impress the grant agencies without actually fulfilling a useful purpose efficiently.
But as catches go, it's not too bad. Basically just create a who whack of extra CS postdoc positions with an emphasis on coding over academic papers.
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
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 this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
"You're the first person I've met (besides my ex-girlfriend) who thinks that saving money is a bad thing."
It is. Spending money makes the US economy go round. Take a look at Macro Economics.
-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
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 |
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
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.
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!
Since this is /. I'd say the spread is like this:
87% will chose OSS
3% will scream very loudly OSX THANK YOU!
9% will ask "What is a blowjob?"
1% will give the right answer
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
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.
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
But you didn't answer on how to keep it effective for a longer period of time.
Private companies are more effective in e.g. health care. (A few years ago, the "responsible" Swedish minister defended that literally half the time for doctors and nurses was administration! If you don't have an acute problem or is an elite athlete, doctors here generally don't bother finding non-obvious problems; they just don't have time.)
But if you had answered that, you'd visit Sweden for a Nobel prize this year. :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"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>>
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.
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.
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.
I don't know if I'd trust the numbers in this paper at all.
From TFA:
There are three distinct ways in which IPRs in software lead to economic inefficiency:
1) The gap between the IPR-protected price and
the competitive-market price (which would be
zero for most software, since it can be transferred
costlessly over the Internet) leads to a deadweight
efficiency loss...
Obviously, distribution costs != development costs.
I'm a believer in Free software, but it appears that this study has been built upon a foundation of sand. So I stopped reading that 20-page PDF at that point, on page 5. I may finish it at some point, out of curiosity, but it doesn't get any more of my precious weekend time.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
Socialism usually works out quite well actually, compared to econo-anarchistic systems like capitalism, leaving 25% of the population in extreme poverty.
Now if we're done with the stereotypes, we can talk about the reasons of profit and failures of proprietary software.
With proprietary software, it usually boils down to two things, marketing and packaging.
Skype is experiencing immense popularity due to marketing, a slick user interface and ease of usage, however, compared to the more mature, technically superior (and open) protocols such as SIP or IAX2 it is clearly not the way to go.
Reasons: calling landlines is expensive, the sound quality is extremely bad, it cannot traverse many firewall setups, cannot be customised, nor is there _any_ hardware available for it. (we set up an asterisk pbx system with 10 sip lines, ordinary/sip phones within one day)
There are a lot of examples where technically/economically superior solutions "lose" when they are filtered out as static, due to marketing, OS/2 anyone?
People want open source, because it is the only development model that can ensure software quality, "free" interchange, security and, that it really does what it says it does.
Now, people who don't know how to use computers argue that a "not windows interface" is a price too high to pay for ensuring quality software.
However, the question is really; should we be listening to them, or shouldn't we demand users comprehend a device they intend to use?
If this government initiative is going to trumpet up more open standard users, then I'm all for it.
Hopefully we will be able to trade our thoughts soon, without breaking any laws.