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Open Source R&D Tax Credit?
Dan writes "The Center for American Progress is proposing an R&D tax credit for open source development." From the article: "Subsidizing open source software development can also be justified on grounds of economic efficiency. Open source software development enhances the ability of other developers to create new products. It also enhances the development and dissemination of knowledge and ideas more broadly. Since the benefits to the broader software development community and the economy as a whole go well beyond the users of an individual software product, a policy that subsidizes open source development would increase economic efficiency."
Most open source software comes with a built-in tax break. No income, no income tax.
Sie ist tunbar!
http://public.resource.org/main.html
Notice Al Gore was VP when this proposal was made.
Center for American Progress
Where is the center of American progress? The president says the front of it is in Baghdad.
Sounds a little too reasonable if you ask me..
Oh. I see, this wasn't proposed by the government.
Lets see more tax credits for relocating heavy industry to the moon.
The upside is unlimited!
I don't know much about corporate tax law, but this is something I keep wondering about: Let's say you develop an open source application. Now let's say you donate the copyright to the FSF under the condition it be GPLed. That code is still of at least some worth to you, because you have GPL rights to it. But, legally you have just donated the code, a thing of worth, to the FSF, a nonprofit organization. Does this count as a deductable charitable donation?
I thought there were glorious financial advantages to open-source development? Seems odd that we need taxpayers to subsidize what is so obviously in people's economic self-interest in the first place.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Or tax shuffle? Never trust the government when they float the words 'tax credit'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A tax cut ("credit" in this case) is not a subsidy.
I also don't think we need the IRS to define whether a project is "open" or not.
1. Get Open Source Tax money
2. Bribe Congress for more
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Finally I see something from the accounting prospective that is justifiable. The government is using open source, why not give the developers a tax incentive? I think it's an excellent idea.
I'm wrapping up my school education, my house will be paid off soon enough, and the interest on my student loans is not going to be enough to off set my income. Yup, I'm going to need to find a new tax shelter in another year or two.
"we are proposing a 20 percent tax credit for qualified out-of-pocket expenses for open source software developers."
Well let's see what "out-of-pocket" expenses are defined as. Because my 'Home-Office' is paid for out of pocket. So that roughly 100 square foot room represents about 1/10th of my house's square footage. Figure the cost of the house minus the land, that's like $140k, which means I should be able to claim 20% of $14k for that expence. And then their are the numerous PCs, the custom built desks, the wiring, the internet connection... I bet I could pull enough expences out of that room to fully clear my taxes for a year, and enough residuals to help cut down from there on.
I wonder what limitations there are on this, if I could put a dent in my income tax by switching some game mods and tools to open source, I would switch them in a heart beat. 8 hours a week on a pet project to cut down on taxable income, a deal too sweet to pass up.
-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
Though I think this would be nice for open source developers, I think most would prefer the government and these progressive PACs spend their time and engery pushing for software patent reform and at least a partial rollback of the DMCA.
"The Center for American Progress is proposing an R&D tax credit for open source development." From the article: "Subsidizing open source software development can also be justified on grounds of economic efficiency. Open source software development enhances the ability of other developers to create new products. It also enhances the development and dissemination of knowledge and ideas more broadly. Since the benefits to the broader software development community and the economy as a whole go well beyond the users of an individual software product, a policy that subsidizes open source development would increase economic efficiency."
The same could be said for science. Do scientists get tax breaks? How about other fields? Let's take this idea to it's limits.
Every company will put linux on a machine and have the user use bugzilla. Then they'll try to claim the tax credit.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
I hate to be the one pouring cold water on this proposal, but it sounds more like an abusable deduction that would allow any programmer to write off 20% of all their computer equipment purchases. If I wanted to abuse the system, couldn't I just write a hello world program, say I spent 2 monthes writing it, throw it on my website, and claim a fat deduction on everything? Would the government have to get in the business of deciding what's worthwhile open source?
Heck, I'm a programmer so this proposal is probably good for me, but stuff like this is why the complete Interal Revenue Code is 3.4 million words, literally 7500 pages long, and filled with loopholes.
There is always one glaring flaw with this plan, even if there is a real market failure that could be addressed by the subsidy - taxes are economically inefficient. Typical estimates of the inefficiency of our standard taxes (income, payroll, sales, and property) run between 10 and 60 cents on the dollar collected, with 20 cents being a conservative average. In other words, the government has to remove $1.20 from the economy to collect a dollar. Or, you could say the government pays for everything at a 20% premium.
Even if there is some sort of market failure with respect to open source (it is probably the same one that is cited for R&D in general), trying to cure it with another market failure is not the answer unless the R&D failure is much larger. I once saw a presentation by someone from NSF on this very topic (The Economic Case for Basic Research), and when I pointed this problem out to him, he actually didn't have an answer. I was surprised, given that most of us learned about the inefficiency of taxes in Econ 101.
The value of an individual's donated time would not qualify|similar to the way charitable contributions are treated. However, out-of-pocket costs, such as fees for web hosting, the depreciated cost of capital expenses such as computers, travel to development-related conferences, and other expenses would qualify for a 20 percent refundable tax credit. We chose 20 percent as the amount of the credit after an examination of the literature surrounding the historical value of the Federal Research Tax credit. ...
There is no formal, systematic evidence on the amount of out-of-pocket expenses by individuals for open source development. Informal evidence suggests that half of all developers have no out-of-pocket costs; and for the remaining half, the expenses average $500.21
What a stupid idea. Lets make the tax system even more complex, for what?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I think that this is a creat vicroty for the OpenSource commumnity. Encourageing OS development turns the heat up for the closed source developers (Microshaft). Giving them more incentive to develop means that we are going to see more companies giving up there source code and thus inceasing the quality of the product.
I wonder is the IRS views unpaid open-source web development as a type of barter?
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Any tax break of government subsidy is a bad thing. It gives the government control over the direction of any FLOSS that takes the money (just like schools that take federal money). It also puts you in a strange position if the software that you are developing violates one or more of your countries laws. I'm not willing to change the direction of my projects just for a subsidy.
BBH
You know how many pages of tax code would have to be added to define open source? Assuming that lawmakers don't mangle it into something that supports the industry even more. And it's not like all open-source is actually useful, either.
And Microsoft would immediately apply for its "Shared Source" to be granted a tax break.
Would you want the US Congress determining the meaning of "open source"?
I am anarch of all I survey.
Why wait for a proposal to pass when you can get HUGE tax credits for writing closed source software NOW? For example, Ohio gave a closed source company $82,386 to keep it's 11 employees in the state! (http://www.odod.state.oh.us/newsroom/releases/135 7.asp Third example, tax break + grants) Thats $7489 per employee now, not in some proposed future.
So all we have to do is put our totally unusable by any one else source code into open source, and suddenly we can write off our development costs!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The truth is that all too often the government taxes people too much, and then they find themselves needing to give "tax credits" back to spurr innovation, retirement savings, house savings, college savings, and medical savings. Well bullshit. All that does is give the government more controll in my life to decide what is a priority and what is not.
How about if they quit freakin taxing me so much to begin with. A nice start would be SSI, anyone under 40 must surely know that they'll never see a peny of it anyhow (unless the dollar is hyperinflated out of existence). Not only that, but we pay for it twice: once before you get your paycheck, and then it's deducted again after you get your paycheck. I especially resent using that number that dog tags me and makes it a cakewalk to steal my ID, I resent being forced into a ponzi scheme, and especially resent coercing my kids to pay for my retirement.
Taxpayers subsidize work precisely because it benefits them. Patents are granted because we all gain from the disclosure of inventions. Copyrights are granted because we want to encourage the creation of art and knowledge. Research is funded because it leads to economic growth.
If open source software is an economic benefit for the nation, then it could be a good investment to encourage its production. The wisdom of the investment remains even if some writers are profiting already.
Note that the proposal allows deductions only for expenses (hardware, services) and not for the writer's time and effort. In my open source work, my contribution in time is far more valuable than my expenses so there would be little impact. My motivations are altruism and the improvement of my tools from the attention of many eyes.
AlpineR
Probably not, unless you receive goods and/or services as a direct result of your contributions.
chown -R us ~you/base
A government that has the power to raise or reduce taxes to benefit open source ALSO has the power to raise or reduce taxes to benefit huge corporations with a heck of a lot more money to give for campaign contributions... who do you think this type of economic intervention will wind up benefitting more? Sorry, but I'm a flat tax advocate -- the government shouldn't be mucking with the economic system at all through preferential taxation. If open source is to succeed or fail, it must do so on it's own merit. (P.S. Yes, I'm also against the mortgage interest tax credit, even though it benefits me to the tune of thousands of dollars per year.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Can somebody friggin' fix slashdot so I never have to see another post like this again?!?!?! It's getting god-damned irritating. Every moron who sees this has to make a "how appropriate!" comment like their the first to ever think of the concept.
But be careful !
I am a coder long enough now to know good programming is a form of modern art and thus should be appreciated accordingly.
But... If they just hand over the money, I see some problems on the horizon.
I mean, as long if it is OSS most people just code for fun and fame, but if money gets involved people get greedy (don't we all?) + every Billy-Joe-Bob would become an 'OSS-developer' all of a sudden.
Instead they'd better sponsor resources such as PC's, servers, hosting, free fat pipes for developers etc. and monitor that.
Damnit Jim, I'm [root@localhost w00t]#, not an AD-Adminstrator(tm) !
Contains a goatse link.
Maybe a better approach is to help subsidize the cost of retraining programmers that lose their jobs because their commercial product got displaced by open source software. I'm not saying that open source is bad--I'm just coming up with one possible way to help negate a drawback.
Sure, open source also helps small businesses and also creates jobs--I'm not demonizing it--but it sounds like helping the few that are directly impacted isn't such a bad idea.
If lawyers open sourced legal forms, then the demand for lawyers would diminish and they'd see their incomes decline. Maybe that is why we don't see them following the footsteps of programmers...
I have a coffee machine that runs linux. Can I get a tax credit for that?
Register the editry.
Instead of supporting the further degeneration of a broken tax system, how about supporting a better one altogether? http://fairtax.org/ http://fairtaxgroups.com/
In many countries, the barter part is only applicable if the service is rendered by someone who is doing this in some professional capacity. Thus, if OSS development is purely done by amateurs with limited knowledge who don't make a living out of coding, that would be OK in my country tax-wise.
Now, if OSS development is done by qualified specialists who make a living coding, the whole tax-break article should be reversed. Any plumber working for free for his neighbour or children's school is performing an act og barter which is taxable even though no cash changes hands.
I think that tax incentives for open source development would be a great way for governments to "pay for" the open source software they use as well, but I think the pushback from closed software developers would be too much for such an idea to take hold.
Microsoft, either directly or through industry lobbyists, would argure that it represents an unfair subsidy of its competition. Yes, Microsoft would be able to participate in open source development to take advantage of the tax incentive just like everyone else, but MS wouldn't belabour that point. The big argument would be that Microsoft Research wouldn't be able to get tax breaks unless it distributed its source code the way the government tells it to do so, and that for the most part those distribution methods are incompatible with the MS business model.
I might (hopefully) be wrong, but I think this is one idea that'll die on the vine. If it does not, and such a tax break is implemented, count on it to define "open source" so broadly as to include any "source available" research projects, such as the "look but don't tough" MS Shared SOurce initiative, or even developers who only offer source code upon payment of a license fee and a signature on an iron-clad NDA. I suppose that would be better than nothing though.
Now the next hurdle to get over is the profound aversion to giving up tax revenue that most governments cannot seem to shake...
... Bill Gates is planning to write an open source VB .Net version of his old hit, gorilla.bas .
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
As an OSS developer, I can say that working on Open Source code/projects has already paid for itself in tax deductions many times over in the last decade.
Those donations you get from the "Paypal" button on your project homepage? Deductable as gifts, not income.
Those hard drives you upgraded to house your OSS code through RCS on a RAID system? Deductable as a business expense.
The space in your house used to develop/work on that OSS code? Deductable as your "workspace".
In my case, I also host and house dozens of projects for the OSS community, mailing lists, web space, torrent trackers, and lots of other things.
That broadband bill? Deductable. Power to keep servers running 24x7? Deductable.
I also have a "regular day job", and I work at the home office, so that too, is deductable, since it is a dedicated section of the house specifically for that.
Being a long-time OSS developer and supporter has definitely paid for itself many times over in deductions alone, not to mention the Google ad revenue that helps fund the websites I maintain and support, out-of-pocket upgrades to storage, servers, etc.
Having a clueful CPA? Priceless .
While, FOSS would likely be considered 'volunteer' work, what about watching comercials. We have been told be media barons that skipping comercials is stealing because we have implicitly agreed to watch the comercials in exchange for content. If that is true, then the IRS should be going after the media barons for not paying taxes on the millions (billions?) of dollars worth barter they have had with the viewers.
They do in my country for all industries I can think of, but I have not seen it for OSS development (yet). As a minimum, sales tax is rendered, but the value of the service is added as taxable income as well. With a tax rate approaching 50% and a sales tax rate of 25% this quickly adds up to big bucks.
However, if you are an amateur who don't know what you are doing, you don't have to worry about tax.
OSS people should be exceptionally pleased that there has not been taxes levied on development work. Proposing a tax break in such a situation is not particuarly smart.
Now if I could only get Uncle Sam to let me slide on doing my taxes untill this goes through. =P
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
How about letting market forces (you know, that little supply and demand thing) determine how/when/why a product is adopted instead of using community resources to pad it? Successful OpenSource projects are successful because they are forced to COMPETE, often much harder than their proprietary counterparts. Weighing the game in favor of OS does as much damage as IP does for proprietary software.
Furthermore, just because software is OS doesn't mean it's good. Why give tax credits to those who don't deserve them? Better instead to force them to compete by being good, and, therefore, deserving of profit.
This proposal makes an incredible amount of sense. The open source model is an excellent way to develop high quality software on the cheap. Large scale open source development would help the economy in a number of ways.
Therefore it will never be approved.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
It's ironic that the system designed to protect us from centralized power and its abuses has effectively just created a multi-tiered tax system. Between federal, state, and local taxes, many people are paying almost half their incomes in tax, and no one level is particularly accountable to any other. So the states can claim that they need their 7% income and sales tax, the city can claim their property tax, and the Fed can claim their ~30%.
But, at least they're responsible with our tax dollars, maintain a balanced budget, don't go into debt, and serve as the model of efficiency.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A nice start would be SSI, anyone under 40 must surely know that they'll never see a peny of it anyhow
Unless people like Bush manage to turn back the clock to 19th century conditions with people starving in the streets, one way or another, the government will provide minimal food and health care for old people. After all, old people vote.
I especially resent using that number that dog tags me and makes it a cakewalk to steal my ID
If right wing nuts didn't keep interfering in the deployment of a secure national ID system, you wouldn't have to worry about that.
I resent being forced into a ponzi scheme, and especially resent coercing my kids to pay for my retirement.
Your kids will pay for your retirement--it doesn't matter how you dress it up: privat retirement accounts, social security, whatever. Even if you stuff money under a mattress, when you use it to buy services once you're retired, you're still depriving your kids of the same amount of goods and services. It's not a "Ponzi scheme", it's a simple economic truth.
The only difference between SSI and other plans is that SSI makes sure everybody is forced to create a minimal income they can live on, and that's good thing. Because if we don't force everybody to do this, people like you would just have a party with their money or invest it poorly and the state still would need to take care of you when you're old, because we don't actually let people starve. Maybe we should, but we don't.
Just ask anyone who's tried to organize a 501 (c)(3) corporation. We do NOT need IRS involved in deciding what is or isn't open-source software.
Lobbying for little tax breaks here and there simply perpetuates the problems of the tax system being used as an instrument of policy.
There's a better way.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If I already paid for programmer's time with my taxes, I should be able to use the source in any way I want - without giving away my own work, acceditation or any other trouble whatsoever. By the way, the same goes for patents received by university stuff/students, software written for a government contract etc.
If you want to impose GPL on me, do it on your own time/dime.
It's okay, tax breaks aren't tax dollars, they're tax [i]undollars[/i].
I for one welcome our new congressional overlords...oversight.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
Sounds like a good idea but there should be additional requirements. For example, the code should be readable by others. It would be easy to write code and intentionally not comment it (or even withhold the comments) so that it is only usable to the author.
While I would defend the point that government R&D is a waste compared to private R&D (I am a scientist, btw), I said nothing of the sort in my previous post.
Instead, what I said was that taxes are inefficient. The logic is pretty simple. Most taxes we collect (income, payroll, sales, property) are taxes on productive behavior. It is common sense, and easily measurable, that when you tax an activity, you get less of it. Hence, raising taxes causes you, me, your cousin Tony, and just above everyone else to shift their behavior away from doing productive things like working, building homes, or buying and selling, and towards less productive activities. The estimate is that we lose about 20 cents of productivity for each dollar we collect. In other words, society has to pay a buck twenty in order for the government to collect a dollar, at least by the normal route. And this is not counting such costs as the IRS, tax compliance, and the costs of politics itself. As I said, this is Econ 101 stuff.
because no one ever earns the money in the first place. That is the tragedy of the dead weight loss, where a win-win exchange is averted because the government tries to take a bigger cut than the net gain between the two traders.
Rather, R&D is providing less bang for the buck. It takes far more people, money, and equipment to get far less novel and exploitable information that it did 50 or 100 years ago.
Insightful? Off-topic! and incorrect.
We don't have a Social Security crisis. It's all crap propaganda. It definitely needs to be tweaked, but the politicians are just trying to rile people up and divert attention from real issues. And they're succeeding.
We have a surplus of SS money for at least until 2040. The projections go out for 75 years and sometime before then, we start having a debt regarding SS taxes coming in and money going out. Congressional Budge Office (CBO) studies show that if we don't extend Bush's tax cuts after 2009, we'll have SS surplus until 2050. So at worst, we'd have to reduce SSI handout out if we don't increase the retirement age or increase the budget towards SS. But a temporary debt is okay because population levels fluctuates. After the baby boomers die, our SS situation will be fine again.
Including health care costs for wounded soldiers, Iraq war and occupation could top $2 trilion. How about those tax cuts? I saw a NY Times article stating CBO projections estimated a difference in revenues of $1.7 trillion over the 10 years. A San Francisco Chronicle article mentions a difference of $737 billion. The difference could be due to when the projections started and ended. This doesn't include reports of the economy improving slower then from any previous recession and being short on the administration's projections of jobs by millions (just think of the revenue difference there).
If even a portion of those funds went to social security, we would have not debt for social security for 75 years! The fact remains, the US government takes out enough money from taxpayers to pay for Social Security for the forseeable future.
The problem isn't the social security system. It's the men and women of the Executive and Legislative branch that balloon the deficit with pork barrel spending. Even if we remove the SS blanket, there's no gaurantee that these people wouldn't spend the money elsewhere. Before we talk about changing social security, we need to have people that would be fiscally responsible.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
anyone under 40 must surely know that they'll never see a peny of it anyhow
And everyone over 40 surely knows that the only way they'll see a penny of it is if they keep taxing those of us under 40.
Never underestimate the power of the AARP in actually getting people to the ballot box.
If Clinton could claim for the used underpants he gave away, why should programmers not get a break too?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
(For example, there's a major lack of Open Source educational software. So, either offer a grant of X amount for one set of Open Source developers to produce it, or offer a prize of X for the first team that can meet some specific criteria.)
I'd say that for some projects - such as educational software - where initial investment is going to be steep, it would be better to work through grant-based projects. PROVIDED they were handed out to people who can and will achieve the goals. If they're just going to be handed to the rich and well-connected, there's no point. Not only do such people not need help with the initial investment, it's doubtful they'll do the work as Open Source (if at all) anyway.
For other projects - say producing KDE or Open Office translations for those Native American languages that have an accepted written form - there is minimal overhead and an X-Prize-like race for each such language might offer definite advantages. Particularly as the money is likely to end up helping poorer communities who could do with the cash. It would also help all people who do not speak English as a first language, or only do so because internationalization is still exceedingly crappy.
Another sponsorship one might be to get the whole of X or the GNU utilities audited and secure to the point where they're usable in mission-critical situations (ie: where someone can get killed if there's a coding error) or in classified networks (which is less important for Government than it is for e-commerce, which is taking a hammering from insecure systems being compromised).
Another prize might be to write a fully compliant IPv6 stack, now that WIDE has abandoned the KAME effort and USAGI seems to have faltered. (KAME and USAGI were fairly compliant stacks, but still a LONG way short of fully compliant with the TAHI tests, and an unknown distance from completion in all areas TAHI doesn't test for.)
A third grant might be to produce a set of diagnostic tools for the Linux kernel, calling each syscall() in turn, or loading kernel modules into a testbed, running a specific series of tests to determine the correctness of the module. Ideally, this would be coupled with the Linux Test Project, as it would be good to have a coherent set of test tools in the same place, but it's possible that would not be the best way to do it.
A third prize could be to add extensible grammar-checking tools to an existing editor, where the team had to demonstrate grammar-checking in an informal language (such as English), a semi-formal subset (such as that used in a legal document or a scientific paper), and a formal language (such as a programming language).
Three possible prizes, three very reasonable grant-based projects, the combination of which would maybe not revolutionize society, but at the very least make technology far more reliable, far more accessible and far more valuable. The benefits to the Government would vastly exceed the costs in a relatively short time.
Personally, I'd like to see the Government sponsor Open Source through grants and prizes (but NOT tax credits, as that only really benefits programmers who are making a lot of money elsewhere already, rather than drawing more people in), provided it was not at the cost of - say - education. There's no point in enhancing society if you then deprive said society of any understanding of what the enhancements are for. That's another reason I don't want tax breaks. Tax breaks are usually paid for by cutting from politically expendible areas such as education, which is a Big No No in my opinion.
I'd much rather the Government provide sponsorship with the aim of paying for su
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Your kids will pay for your retirement--it doesn't matter how you dress it up: privat retirement accounts, social security, whatever. Even if you stuff money under a mattress, when you use it to buy services once you're retired, you're still depriving your kids of the same amount of goods and services. It's not a "Ponzi scheme", it's a simple economic truth.
Spoken like someone who hasn't taken a macroeconomics class. Stuffing money under a mattress keeps it out of the economy and deprives others of its use. Keeping it in a savings account; investing it (traditionally in stocks, bonds or some mix thereof); and eventually spending it all makes it available for others to use: The bank holding the savings account loans it out to others; the bonds are used to finance government projects; the stocks are used to finance means of production; and expendatures mean that it falls into someone else's hands such that *they* can invest or spend it, all of which helps the economy.
So -- folks who have enough savings to retire off of benefit the economy their kids are working in while those savings are invested, and benefit their kids' economy when the funds are spent. Failing to save and leeching off the future economy via taxes, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
If right wing nuts didn't keep interfering in the deployment of a secure national ID system, you wouldn't have to worry about that.
Erm. That's not just "right wing nuts", there. Privacy is a pretty darned effectively-entrenched American value -- as is having a firmly limited government. Folks don't need to be Christian fundies, oppose reproductive rights or want to legislate their moral views to appreciate those principals. Indeed, most of the folks I know who tend towards the traditional "left" haven't identified themselves to me as staunch supporters of the national ID thing, and I'd submit that it's only the staunchest left wing nuts (and neo-cons, who are more authoritarian than conservative) who support it.
The only difference between SSI and other plans is that SSI makes sure everybody is forced to create a minimal income they can live on, and that's good thing.
If SSI were actually run as originally intended, it would be one thing (though still coercive, and thus morally corrupt if my Libertarian hat is on today). However, when the government starts paying back those who are cashing out from income supposedly going into the private accounts of those coming in, it is indeed nothing more than a legalized and legislated Ponzi scheme -- and those always fall over, sooner or later.
[nuttiness]Personally, I'd rather take the risk of starving. If I've been of sufficient value to society to be worth the cost of my upkeep, I'll either have accrued sufficient assets to live off of, or have third parties willing to voluntarily pay said costs. If I haven't, the extent to which I am a detriment to society obviously outweighs my benefit. Isn't making such optimal decisions precisely what the free market is best at?[/nuttiness]
The problem isn't the social security system. It's the men and women of the Executive and Legislative branch that balloon the deficit with pork barrel spending. Even if we remove the SS blanket, there's no gaurantee that these people wouldn't spend the money elsewhere. Before we talk about changing social security, we need to have people that would be fiscally responsible.
This is wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. FYI, the SSI program is moral and intellectual sewage. Even if we could coax politicians to make the thing solvent, it is still intellectual and moral sewage. The fact is, in the real world, things like that have consequences and if the consequences didn't show up this form they would show up in another form. So name one financial projection from the government in the last 100 years that has been correct. There is none, so you can talk CBO projections all you want, but I am talking consequences.
First, ponzi schemes don't work and are not productive ways to use or save money! This is a fact of life, it is a God given truth ... that's why any financial planner in the US who started one would be thrown in the can and sued into oblivian. It amazes me that the same people who can see that these ponzi schemes are predestined to become failueres when a company does it, but suddenly when the government does it then they think that all the potential consequences just magically go away.
Second, governments do not save or use resources as wisely on average as individuals do. This is also a God given truth ... it is a fact of life. This is why every government in the history of human kind that has had a centrally planned economy has failed their people badly. People should take a lesson from the old soviet union ... just because the government promised them free bread, didn't mean that mean that you had a secure food supply. Just because the government promises people social security, doesn't mean that people are going to be socially secure.
I'm enjoying one of the best fruits of Open Source, the Tomahawk Desktop. If you are curious what is Tomahawk Desktop, it an Apple like multimedia Linux OS for desktops and laptops.
Tomahawk and other are not feasible if not for Open Source. Therefore, Open Source R&D tax credit not only for US, US should as the big brother encourage other countries to follow it too.
How convenient. You disregard data because it might contradict your views. You talk in general terms but really don't address SS itself. And your previous post which had no more substance is still moderated insightful. How sad.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
This tax-credit doesn't go far enough.
We already let people deduct charitable donations from their taxable income, why not charitable labor hours? Open-source is but one form of volunteer work, the others should get credit. People's labor is worth something, especially for a worthy cause.
You talk in general terms but really don't address SS itself. And your previous post which had no more substance is still moderated insightful.
This is because the fundamental problem isn't how the conclusion is drawn, the fundamental problem is the premise. Get the freakin premises right about SSI, and I'll have no problem arguing about how things will draw out. Untill then, it is a waste of time.
How Sad
Indeed.
Since the benefits to the broader software development community and the economy as a whole go well beyond the users of an individual software product, a policy that subsidizes open source development would increase economic efficiency.
Tax Credits essentially means that the goverment pays people to develop Open Source Software. Open source is currently being subsidised by corporations who pay people to continue to develop an open source product. Many major corporations employ people to continue OSS projects that they were already working on (Linus Torvalds is a prime example, he worked for Transmetta for a while and now Open Source Development Labs). The question here comes down to: who is better equiped to make funding decisions about which OSS projects to fund. The current model is a good one in my opinion and there's no need to have the government make these types of decisions. Corporations are better at deciding which projects to throw money at.
No Sigs!
Yup, it's already fixed: mod redundant.
No Sigs!
But, legally you have just donated the code, a thing of worth, to the FSF, a nonprofit organization.
Not necessarily, accounting is strange. If you do R&D and develop something patentable you can not list that patent as an asset that has value. However if you buy a patent then you can list that patent as an asset that has value. The rational is that in the former case the developer can just make up a number and say that is the value of the patent, however in the later case we have a historical market transaction that defined the cost of the patent. "Historical Cost" is something very important to an accountant, and your donation doesn't have one, your R&D expense doesn't count, R&D is merely considered a current expense.
I thought there were glorious financial advantages to open-source development? Seems odd that we need taxpayers to subsidize what is so obviously in people's economic self-interest in the first place.
FOSS has always been heavily subsidized. BSD, GNU (RMS's work at MIT?), all the academics doing research , etc.
In the absence of lower spending, a tax break now just means more taxes somewhere else in the future.
Lets say you do create an open source app. Put it up for download for all to check out. A company comes along and steals that code for their own app and sells it and claims it as theirs. Who gets the tax break and could this company get in legal difficulty for not only stealing this code but taking a break from the IRS that they had no right to in the first place.
GPL'd code may not be able to offer a tax break, it's discriminatory, it denies access to a large segment of taxpayers. BSD'd code would have a better chance of surviving legal challenges. More importantly, stay away from the government, you have no clue what a mess you could make of things by increasing government involvement. If a tax break were available for GPL'd code, and if it lost a legal challenge, then a corp may take the next step using this precedent to challenge any taxpayer funded projects being GPL'd. It's a small step from the former to the later. A judge might order all taxpayer funded GPL'd projects to be forked and relicensed with a free non-discriminatory license. If you bring the government in, you have no idea where things will end up.
A liberal organization which is pretty slanted against the republicans proposes legislation to a congress which is still controlled by the conservatives they don't like.
This isn't news, this is wishful thinking...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I haven't heard a statement as absurd as this on slashdot for at least 5 minutes! The very idea of calling a subsidy "ecomonically efficient" is an oxymoron. If something needs to be subsidized, then its very clear that there isn't enough demand for the product or service at said price in the free market. If the demand is not great enough, then the product or service must improve, die, or be absorbed by a more successful seller (or programmer). Not one single dime of my tax money should go to pay for open source software. If I find value in open source software, I'll VOLUNTARILY donate money to it. Once you take away the voluntary payments, and force people with a gun to pay something (ie, tax them), then the software can no longer be considred "open" source. In fact, its even worse than closed source...because at least you have the option of not buying closed source software.
I think, therefore I doh.
I agree with you that tax deductions and credits are overused, but launching into the old "lets move to a sales tax based system" has always been and forever will be bad system for the poor and a great system for the rich. Why? Because a loaf of bread costs the same no matter how much you make, but you can buy a whole lot more loaves of bread as a rich person. And yet if you need 21 loaves of bread a week to survive and as a poor person you can only buy 10, how does taxing the loaf of bread make it any fairer when the rich are eating 50 a week?
The rich in this country are extremely rich and the poor are very poor. How does it benefit the economy as a whole and the country to have the rich hoard all that money? It's not like they spend it, that's why they are rich! They hoard it!
Plus if you tax only sales tax the amount of the US budget will go crashing down. Spending is propped up by those who can pay more taxes. Those who make $200,000 may think it's "unfair" but their taxes pay for the military, and for social programs who keep those who have not from picking up guns and knives and robbing their beautiful homes.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I wonder if Bug testing qualifies. If it does, then just using Linux and any OpenSource product counts :D
Microsoft is going to be pissed.
The Centre for American Progress proposed a new policy of Genocide/Slavery for the Middle East, similar to the one used against native Americans and Blacks, and insisted that all American medical aid be withdrawn from any country which taught evolution in its schools.
It further announced that once its legislation on patented thought is completed, it will invade and slaughter the citizens of any country who do not think that America is the worlds greatest democracy, and so should be funded by all other countries in perpetuity.
Applications are also invited for the post of Junior American Progress Logician. The successful candidate will be required to work on a project to explain why Saddam's ordering the death penalty for villagers who tried to assasinate him in 1982 is a quite different circumstance from American soldiers murdering 15 villagers in their homes after a bomb was planted near their convoy in 2006.
Any time you ask the government to reward you for something, I think it's only fair that the people paying out that reward (the taxpayers) have a say in what counts as rewardable and what doesn't.
I'm all for people saying they have a right to do what they want in their private life, but they have left their private life when they start applying for special treatment from the government.
To the actual point of openness, it seems to me quite material when you're going to start a large-scale tax break program (whether for the use of a particular fuel, the worshiping of a particular religion, or the introduction of a new business model--where you could argue "open source" is a bit of each) to ask the question "who is this benefiting?" (another way of saying "how open is this?").
Since the GPL, for example, benefits some business models and not others, and hence some companies and not others, I think the people from those "other companies" (whose taxes are going to encourage this) have a legitimate need to have a say.
Besides, if there is really no definition at all of open, then suppose I choose to take "open" to mean "closed"? Can I then have the tax break? There must be some definition or language is useless. Whether you spell out that definition or make a choice to use one dictionary's definition rather than another, it's still got to be the government that does it if it's the government offering the money.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
See this. Your argument is only correct if you take a narrow view of what economics is. There are many things of value that can't be measured in dollars.
People cooperating through government to develop software for a once off cost that could then be copied millions of times could easily be hugely economically efficient, beating the current ">$40,000,000,000 per year for about a dozen programs developed more than two decades ago" model we currently have that is in large part a tragedy of the commons.
Not saying your wrong, it's just not the open-and-shut case you're implying. Personally I'd like to see broken patent/copyright law fixed so that software/media markets aren't the unstable, winner-take-all situation we currently have.
---
The per-copy cost of mass market software is close to zero.
I don't suppose that anybody here will lose any sleep over msft not being treated fairly.
But, think about it, is it really fair for the government to force taxpayers to bankroll your competition?
I think the operative word here is "could." Politicians could make the world a better place, and claim that if you vote for them, that they will make the world a better place...but do they? I want you to give me just ONE example of how government interferance of freedom has been hugely economically efficient. Just one. The fact is, you'll be searching forever, because the very nature of the government won't allow efficiency. In fact, efficiency is discouraged as it means the program will receive less funding next year.
Whether you hate capitalists or not, the fact remains that people that compete in a free market produce better products and lower prices than monopolies (like the government) that don't have to compete. And the most important fact remains: stealing money from the many to pay for the few is still THEFT regardless of the great intentions of the thieves. Someone that steals bread to feed the family is still a damn thief. A government that steals my money to pay for some open source programmer is a criminal government.
I think, therefore I doh.
I'd start clue-sticking around here, but I'D RUN OUT OF STICKS
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
How about if they quit freakin taxing me so much to begin with. A nice start would be SSI
i ncome/
From the rest of your post, I get the impression that you are talking about Social Security. You should know that the term SSI is commonly used to refer to Supplemental Security Income, which is different and completely separate from social security.
http://www.ssa.gov/notices/supplemental-security-
The idea that a tax credit will make something more efficient is humorous. First, if something is worth doing, it will not require the gov't giving us an incentive to do it. The reason the open source model has grown in popularity is because the necessary incentives are already in place. Some people are able to make money providing support, distribution of the software, related literature, etc. For others the incentive is the pleasure they derive from creation (an old boss of mine called this the "existential joy of creation"). Second, when has gov't intervention, complicating taxes (further) and providing an advantage to one type of business and not others ever been socially desireble? Will the world be a better place if you have to bribe people to do what you (not necessarily everybody) consider "right"? There are obviously people out there who feel that open source is not the best way to organize software production, is it an accepteble use of gov't to put these people at a relative disadvantage by subsidizing the opposite of what they do? Lastly, if we assume that open source requires a subsidy in order to compete it can only mean we beleive that it is not otherwise viable.
Nobody makes a living writing OSS. The only companies that do this are trying to commodize product X because they sell complementary product Y, which ain't OSS.
Let's think for a moment. Does the open-source community need tax breaks? Has it produced less code, recently, or perhaps fewer people are in it? Is there a problem that a law needs to address? I would say not. Show me a study that says the open-source community needs tax breaks.
I've written a *lot* of open-source code, and profited very little from it. This tax break may benefit me, but more importantly to me, it will benefit every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes by and writes a program no one will ever use. This has two effects: first, it dilutes the quality of open-source software and may create ill-will against the open-source community. Second, it sends money badly needed by all taxpayers to a small group that doesn't need that money based on their particular merit. Let the criteria for tax breaks be actual need for them - low incomes, number of children, elderly parents who can't take care of themselves... Better yet, lower taxes across the board.
Don't forget that deductions can be taken for many expenses. Talk to someone who knows the tax law, you'll be better off than voting for this boondoggle.
Let's not kid ourselves. This would address a non-existent problem with money this country does not have (just check the national deficit), and cause many more problems down the road.
Ted
Wow, that was pretty retarded of me: in the first line I messed my math all up. I meant to say, if you make $50k and you have a $10k deduction, you should only pay taxes on $40k, NOT $30k.
Somewhere, my first-grade teacher just lurched in her grave/wheelchair/wherever.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
You make good points, but your arguments would carry more weight if they weren't so MS-centric.
/.ers but Apple wouldn't make a strong example.
I made mention of Microsoft because of their track record--they have previously been agressive lobbyists for software patenting in Europe, for example, and has been extremely forceful in defending its closed-source position in its attempt to block Massachusetts bureaucrats from making its own IT policy that even suggests favourtism towards open source (Massachusetts in fact has suggested NOTHING at all that favours open source applications over closed applications--it merely wants to mandate the user of open standards in FILE FORMATS in order to ensure interoperability and protect against obsolescence and vendor lock-in).
There are indeed other closed-software companies out there who are rabidly protectionist..the most (in)famous of all being SCO--but of course SCO is the laughingstock of the corporate world and a pipsqueak in the industry. Apple is also a distant second in comparison to Microsoft, and its track record isn't as consistently bad as Microsoft's has been. Truthbully, Apple's track record is all over the place: it has been a willing participant in open source by basing the foundation of OS X on an open UNIX platform and establishing the Darwin project to allow public participation in its development. OTOH, it has also not been the most cooperative partner in open software projects either (ask Konqueror developers how nicely Apple plays--it tended to take much more easily than it gave when it came to Safari). Apple has also been quite protectionist in its hardware and music service business--it puts up as many artificial barriers as it can to 3rd party particiapation in the iTunes/iPod community and despite a brief, bungled experiment is allowing "official" Mac clones in the 1990s, the entire Mac line has remained notoriously and tightly closed. Even though it has moved to Intel, Apple has continued to make a protectionist, closed hardware/software platform central to its computer business.
Despite the spotty record in contributing to open systems, Apple has not been a stron lobbyist for government protection as Microsoft has--and would probably welcome the sizeable credits it would get for its use of BSD and even GNU technology in its OS. Yes, it is given a too-easy ride by a lot of
Adobe is in the same place as Apple--it has been nasty at times in protecting its closed technology but has also accepted and even provided lukewarm endorsement of open software: it has released a Linux verion of its Acrobat reader and has been far more willing to share Postscript and PDF with others to establish a fairly open standard document format. Also, while it has initiaited some nasty lawsuits over circumvention of its pretection schemes (for example) Adobe has not been forefront in trying to legislate protectionist policies for the closed software industry.
So basically, I am puzzled as to how using Microsoft--the strongest example--to defend my argument could possibly weaken that argument. Perhaps I could be modded "-1 unoriginal" at best though I must admit...