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FOSS Development As Economic Stimulus
heybus writes "Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama's estimated $800 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with $2 billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker's idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers' projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, 'the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'"
Open Source is the ultimate in re-usable investments in the area of computer technology.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Whoa, whoa, whoa - spend 0.25% of the stimulus package all in one place? That sounds excessively bold.
I mean who didn't realize housing was in a bubble, besides paid economists with special interests or complete morons? It was blindingly obvious since 2005.
I only credit anyone for calling exactly when it would completely implode. That took brains.
I like FOSS, I like it a lot in fact. However, I still have some concerns about this.
1) Would the overhead of allocating funds be greater than the reward? (always a question in government bullucracy)
2) How would we be sure the right people get the money, and not 'fakes'?
3) How do we make sure projects continue to be free after they stop getting government funding?
Maybe these issues have been addressed, but most people will (or should) ask these questions, about ANY government subsidization/awards.
I voted for Obama primarily because he seemed intelligent. The thing that brings us out of this recession is jobs jobs jobs. I would really appreciate it if there was tax credit for companies that offered a tuition benefit or on the job training for those people needing to transition to different careers. As it is now, companies that are hiring do not want to spend one hour on training for straight forward tasks and would rather leave the job open.
Handing out money to banks that won't lend it, or tax cuts to billionaire investment bankers who buy expensive art, or paying of state debt, or giving tax cuts to corporations that give dividends to shareholders, or construction projects that build bridges to everywhere but no one can afford to drive over them, all do little to replace the jobs that are being lost.
Obama, we are going to learn if you really are intelligent right out of the gate.
Simply establishing the idea that a source code base is like physical infrastructure will benefit open source projects even more than the actual investment.
Having that reality as a frame of reference would make it much easier to push for the growth of that source code infrastructure.
In addition to employing programmers, 'the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'"
Sure, but what about Microsoft, or Adobe, or various other companies that make software? Won't this be competing directly with them? It's bad enough that they have to compete with FOSS as is, but FOSS supercharged with two billion government dollars?
Surely the sensible thing to do would be to give the money directly to Microsoft and Adobe and the like. You wouldn't bail out the auto industry by giving money to custom car builders, nor the banking industry by giving money to loan sharks.
Kidding, of course. But I'll bet there will be corporations that won't be thrilled by this.
Loose lips lose spit.
or should we just call it the "Great Leap Forward". I mean, the Federal Gov seems to think money and wealth can be created with the stroke of a pin and all will be well. Right? Nevermind the fact central planning will lead to another "bridge to no where" on a colossal scale!
Life is not for the lazy.
How would you decide who gets the money? Would you need to demonstrate suitable skill in coding first? There should be some sort of filtering criteria so the money isn't thrown away, especially since you are redistributing other people's wealth.
Perhaps some type of competition format for ideas would do best. Various private companies such as Google have done this, I believe.
Why feed this beast?
Feds take us to war
Feds break social security promises
Feds are incapable of disaster recovery
Don't think because you're guy is now in charge, he/you can control this monster. Come see me in 4 years, I'd love to be shown up. I fear that hubris, not naivety, best epitomizes the left in America today. You say government can be an agent of good? I say evil is an emergent property of large systems. Evil trumps good. Evil must be confronted.
Let's slash, cut, burn, tear down, destroy the federal government - make it as small as we can. Focus on government that makes a huge difference in your daily lives and has a hope of spending our money better: your local and state government (outside of CA).
Oh, and by the way, local gov't is also the government that's close enough for you to drive to and actually participate in once in awhile. And that's nice to actually matter in the process, you know? Yes, smaller scale than the federal gov't, but you can actually play a role!
I have faith that something so logical could be implemented, in this day and age. Those with the power to support this simply won't be comprehend the simplicity of such a plan. I mean, seems like the worse case scenario in said plan would be a set of coders end up spending way too much money of soda, video games, and geek toys.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...would just use this as a wedge issue, further "proof" of Obama's "socialism," and Obama has been going out of his way to avoid wedge issues. I think he knows that he can rule, but can't be effective, with a 51% majority.
As much as I love the entire open source movement, I don't think it would ever fly, politically, in our current culture.
This sounds awesome, but let's be realistic. How can we determine who gets funding? If the government treats the appropriation of funds for FOSS projects similarly to the bail-out of financial institutions, the only projects that would qualify are the ones that are ailing. At the risk of being a troll (albeit a realistic one), can you justify taxpayer dollars for projects like OpenOffice?
Clearly, the government cannot treat FOSS projects in the same as financial bailouts. Therefore, what system could be put in place that determines which projects receive stimulus funding?
As free software conquers more and more areas, funding will become an issue. I think the government will play a crucial role there; in the end, a large part of the software industry will have to be socialized.
However, free software can cause whole industries to implode (call it a positive side effect). So the net effect of funding free software is more and better software solutions for the citizens but also more unemployment and lower salaries for the software developers.
So unless you find enough freeway construction projects for unemployed software developers, free software has the potential of lowering the GDP in the short term. Also, the government generally doesn't want to compete directly with private industry. The society is gradually coming to an understanding that health care and the Internet should be government functions, but it is still a long way from accepting that software should be done by the government as well.
Who will benefit from all the free code?
China, India , Europe, the list goes on and on.
But America won't be on the list, because with its' relatively high employee cost it won't actually see any money coming back in from support contracts or consumer hardware.
It's nice to support OSS, but nobody should kid themselves that the US will benefit.
I'd fantasized about quitting my job and spending all my time working on my little hobby projects that I keep in an svn repo.. Now if this gets enacted I can get the financing to do it!
Sure, lots of free software consists of large projects organized similarly to how you'd see at a proprietary software company. But then it can be some guy working in a basement. In college I wrote some programs to solve problems I had, put them online and then randomly saw them included in distros and translated to languages I didn't speak. But somehow I don't think I could have fed myself doing that. And I feel like getting the government to do it for me would have been cheating. :-)
How would you distinguish between some "important" project and the basement dwellers? Do I quit my day job and apply for a grant?
To those who are asking how the Government would decide how funds should be allocated... isn't this what they already do for research spending?
They use Academies and Universities to evaluate the value of any proposal and they determine priority.
They also make decisions like this in nearly every corner of society. The FDA have the experts on food safety, the EPA on environment, etc. There is a reasonably good system for evaluating drug testing and approval in place... but they cannot do it for OSS?
FOSS software increases productivity. It reduces overhead and costs. The evolution of free software reduces the demand for programming and support labor in the long term.
This is not good for the economy. Our economy is hopelessly reliant on unskilled twits who can barely keep our infrastructure running; who spend many hours increasing the problem rather than diminishing it, and who get paid a good wage doing that so they can buy the latest Plasma TV and show off to their friends their XBox skillz in HiDef. If everybody converted to Linux and BSD in the server room, there's another quarter million MCSEs out of work. Imagine all the servers that won't need to be updated on Patch Tuesday and Surprise Thursday! It'll be utter anarchy! Some servers won't be rebooted for months.
This is bad... for Obama.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
all code must be written in ADA.
Top Tag: fascism? Really?
Stupid ass is stupid does
Paying good programmers to develop Open Source software would be a brilliant and very, very effective use of taxpayer dollars. You get "the gift that keeps on giving", because people who want to work on a project for nothing after the funding phase is over can keep making improvements. For example: project Dogwaffle isn't PhotoShop, but it's pretty damned good, and it's not going to cost you half a grand every time you want to get the next version. It would also be possible to mandate software that runs efficiently on systems that are considerably less than state-of-the-art.
If there's a down side, it's that as our computing needs grow and change, we either let poor and otherwise-disadvantaged people start falling behind, or fork out more bucks to ensure that whatever the new killer ap happens to be five years from now is Open Source.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Notice how open source is supposed to work the same way as scientific research does? Both of them requires socialism economics in order to work well.
Look at scientific research for example, you pour a large amount of money into it, but you can't sell the results of your research. You can only see the impact of your research, if any, a couple of years after some companies see the commercial value of your research and decided to use it.
Look at LHC for example, is there any commercial value for investing such large amount of money for the research? No. How about research on nature and species in a certain natural ecosystem? Other than probably selling the video to few people who are interested and willing to pay, I don't see much commercial value in such research.
So then think about it, why on earth can such research still exist today? If the world is under pure capitalism, nobody is going to spend any money to support these research. Instead, you need a socialism model to support the research.
The current socialism model to support research is to gather a pool of fund from a large group of people, and distribute the resource to everyone in a centralised way. Our pool of resource may be from university, which is paid by university students or sponsored by government. Or the resource may be directly from government, which acts as a pool of fund from the taxpayers.
Hence in some way, everyone in a nation contributes a tiny fraction of money to the research institution. The results of the research would then get contributed back to the society and benefits everyone.
In fact, tax is a kind of socialism that solves problem of requiring tiny fraction of resource from huge amount of people. A country with 100% socialism is just meaning a country with 100% tax.
So compare this with open source, what's the different? If you divide the cost of development with the number of people who benefit, everyone is supposed to pay a very small amount of money.
The current difficulties of open source is that there is actually no way to collect this small amount of money from everyone, and thus open source projects usually require small number of people to donate for most of the cost, while all other people becomes freeriders.
I believe that in order for open source projects to grow in a healthy way, a socialism model for open source has to be established, and we have to have a pool of fund to support the projects. And currently, the only kind of pool of fund I can think of is from the government.
Uh... This seems like insanity.
1) Shouldn't fiscal stimulus be targeting the hardest hit? The job market isn't terrific for IT but it's a whole lot better than construction or car manufacturing or, gulp, finance.
2) US companies dominate in the IT space and have carved out nice, evil little monopolies. This means more jobs for US citizens. Why give up this competitive advantage during a time of massive economic pain?
3) Are the hardest hit consumers really going to care if they can buy a computer loaded with ubuntu rather than windows? I doubt they'd waste their dollars on either. A cheap wii, sure, but a computer? ha!
If a supermarket that's vital for a community is struggling and at risk of closing, forcing it to cut back on staff, you wouldn't help things by opening a temporary, government subsidised store opposite that, thanks to the tax dollars behind it, can undercut the struggling store's prices.
The supermarket will close and the community will be left with the unviable government store that's chewing through the town's budget.
It's all well and good providing a vital service and short term employment but it has to be done in a way which won't drive other companies out of business.
There are no limits to what Microsoft, companies like Microsoft and their supporters would do to prevent that from happening.
I have often wondered what sort of chaos would ensue if the plight of the "big 3 auto" were shared by Microsoft. It could upset employment at all levels of the economy. The ripples of the effect would be global. But in the end, I believe people and business would simply work around the issue if Microsoft simply failed and ceased to be. I think that perhaps the overall effect would be somewhere between three and four times as annoying as the latest daylight savings time changes. But people would move off of Microsoft Windows because the platform would just be too unsafe to work with.
One way or another, people will eventually find that Microsoft isn't as "necessary" as they currently believe. Ultimately, when you break down computing and data processing to what needs they serve, it is easy to see that just about anything will do. The biggest problem is getting over people's natural fear of the unknown. Microsoft is all that most people know and so anything else is to be feared and avoided. But when shoved into the water, people will swim.
Publicly funded F/OSS software projects would show the world that Microsoft isn't as necessary as they currently believe. Microsoft would pull no stops in preventing that from happening and I would even go so far as to say they would collectively hold the value of no single life above the interests of their business and business model.
Your example is bad. A supermarket is a consumer, not a producer. Now let me give you a real example, one I know something about.
Years ago, there were many companies making marine engines. They were typically very bespoke and very expensive, and though they were very solidly built they were not terribly reliable. Then what happened was consolidation. Volume manufacturers appeared who produced limited ranges of engines that were much cheaper and, because R&D was amortised over high volume, much more reliable - companies like Kubota, Mitsubishi, Mercedes, Volvo. So the small manufacturers went bust, didn't they?
Of course not. They simply absorbed the high volume engines into their product range. They took the core engines and used their marinising parts to provide a range of options for different applications, which they could now do more cheaply. They focussed on services and added value. Because they did not have to have lots of capital tied up in core engine production, they had lower financial risk. The reduction in cost is one reason for the explosion in the powerboat market.
Same thing for software. Most small companies do not run by making core services. They survive on supplying special markets. Common core software allows them to focus their expertise on the added value in those markets. Because the vertical market software now has a lower cost basis, more people can afford it. The market grows. The company has a more diversified customer base so it has to do more customisation. This absorbs the resources that were once trying to maintain the invisible code.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development
Capitalist economics doesn't work like that. Money that consumers don't spend doesn't contribute to GDP, but money they do spend does, and GDP is the magic number (remember, we're all happier when the numbers go up).
This highlights why OSS won't be a pillar of Obama's spending spree. Microsoft sell software made by developers they pay and these developers then spend their pay on other software (say). This moves money round the economy continuously and makes the GDP look great. Paying a developer to create a free piece of software is effectively a one off payment and doesn't contribute to GDP much (it mainly increases coffee consumption), in fact all it does really is inflate government spending/borrowing.
The end result for the user is clearly better in the second case, but better for the "economy" in the first. If you want the government to choose what's better for the user at the expense of the "economy", well, I guess you'd better move to Canada or one of those other commie countries cos it won't happen in the US of A.
Why all these comparisons to the New Deal? It didn't work. If it wasn't for WW2 we would never have gotten out of it. All we got in eight years was government debt and unemployment did not change. Sorry but this use it for FOSS is simply pie in the sky type crap. Why? Because those who actually implement it will not have any relation to those in the community. It will simply route money to schools, after all they can do this just fine and they need the money as well as the computers.
No, instead of spending the money by the government why not let those who actually earn it decide what to do with it? Give all those who pay income tax a tax holiday. This will do two things, one is to allow the working American to spend his money where he wants thereby focusing the bailout on businesses that matter to the earners as show them just how much a burden the government truly is.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
He may be a clever guy with a good idea but he totaly misunderstands how democracy 2.0 works in hte U.S.
Voters are largly irrelevant in Dem 2.0, The suckers vote for whoever has the best TV adds.
Therefore what really matters are the campaign contributors so you can by better and more TV adds than your rivals.
The best contibutors are big businesses and the people who own big businesses. So if you get elected you need to keep these people happy and ensure the funds keep coming your way. MS, Oracle etc. are all big campaign contributors -- it would be electoral suicide for a government to fund a open source initiative which ate into there revenues.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
In a perfectly efficient, competitive market, profit goes to zero. Obviously companies don't want that, so it's in their interest to work against the establishment of a free-market economy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Watch the definition of Open Source getting brutally molested if there's government money available to subsidize its development.
I would not be surprised to see a Microsoft "Open Source" license which requires use of Microsoft APIs or development tools, and/or restricts use to specific versions of Windows, and/or forbids building for or porting to non-Windows platforms, and/or forbids use of code excerpts under any other type of license. In other words, an OSS license which is the very antithesis of Apache or BSD or GPL or MIT, and is open only in name.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Paying a developer to create a free piece of software is effectively a one off payment and doesn't contribute to GDP much (it mainly increases coffee consumption), in fact all it does really is inflate government spending/borrowing.
Every dollar spent by the government is by definition included 100% in the GDP. The more the government spends, the higher the GDP. Hence the high GDP of the Nordic Countries.
However, the problem with free software and government spending is that free software is cheaper for the whole national economy to produce and therefore, economically speaking, of less value.
In a perfectly efficient, competitive market, profit goes to zero.
What are you talking about? Being efficient and competitive have nothing to do with profits.
We may need to redefine the criteria for "good enough for government work"... or not.
Profit is market inefficiency due to lack of competition---someone selling a product for more than the marginal cost of production, which hasn't yet been exploited by an undercutting competitor, often due to difficulty of market access or strongly entrenched incumbents.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not everything that's worth doing is worth doing with tax money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why not spend the money on converting closed format documents to ODF ? The public benefits, both from increased capability to access government records, and from having to be somewhat IT literate in order to do the conversion work.
I'm sure there are plenty of other situations where having an army of operators ready to convert and/or digitise records would be to the public benefit. Exposure to OSS in schools would reduce costs, and increase knowledge and even help to address the claims of whiners who claim that there aren't enough OSS educational programs for use in general education.
Spend money now, to save money later. No matter which side of the political divide you're on, you have to accept that government by definition is inherently socialist, in that it seeks to promote or protect the well being of its citizens. Surely the freedom to access public records without paying for software and the freedom to create your own software to access those records is in the interests of every citizen. No public website should demand that you use a certain browser, or need access to proprietary software to view the content. You might even extend that to the service sector too. After all, there are regulations about disabled access already. Surely we are all disabled when a bank demands you run activex, or refuses to tell you your balance unless you are using IE, or you can't watch a video on a news site because you don't run the latest DRM encrusted media player. It's discrimination when these things occur, and that is one of the things government is supposed to eliminate.
My niece has just moved up to the next level of school and now needs a computer to do homework. But it has to be Windows. Whatever you say about the cost of Windows, it is not capable of standing alone in the market without professional people to support it. It is like requiring all school children to carry an expensive bucket which is known to have a hole in it. But that doesn't matter, because you create jobs by having other people follow the kids around with a non-holed bucket, and clearing up after them. It is not efficient, and lack of efficiency is what costs money. You never make things better by legislating inefficiency.
It's a bit like the old "teach a man to fish" saying. If you give kids only proprietary software, is it surprising that they have to keep paying for it in adulthood ? Teach them OSS and they have the tools for the rest of their lives, plus they come to expect that anything government related is open to inspection and criticism, which is the way it should be.
The fundamentals of socialism is about who owns and controls the capital in the means of production. In a capitalist system it is individuals - in the socialist system it is the state.
Now whatever you say about this investment in OSS, you can't say it's socialism unless the state expects a measure on control of the OSS projects, which they are not.
One can say that this is government intervention in free market capitalism - and the free market capitalist will, true to form, roll out the "Socialism" bogeyman to batter any attempts at government intervention. Unfortunately, the free market is, excuse my French, fucked. The economic crisis we are all going through at the moment is because of Lassez Faire principals which have had their day in court and come up serious wanting. It is time to try something else.
To suggest that there is only either "Reckless Abandon Free Market Capitalism" or "Soviet Style Communist Socialism" is a nonsense. It is quite possible to have a capitalist system that involves a sensible government intervention and regulation, that is not socialist.
(Although other than the use of the term Socialism, on the grounds that it will be intentionally abused by the dim-witted jingoists, I agree with everything else you said).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
and NEVER had to be fixed or updated in 80 years?
Yeah
"This is my fathers axe. I've changed the handle three times and the head twice, but it's still my father's axe."
"It's been 33 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
I have a better idea. Why don't they just give us our damn money back and let us decide how to spend it? Why should a bunch of career politicians be allowed to pick and choose who gets the money? Individuals invest money with the intent of making a return on their investment. Politicians spend money to get more votes. Once they get their hands on our money it becomes dirty money, used to buy votes. You might as well be accepting money from crack dealers. I guarantee if they did decide to spend money supporting "open source" software there would be strings attached. They would put so many rules and stipulations on it that it wouldn't be open source anymore.
Open source people suddenly argue that the economy demands the government give them money, so that their software can continue to be "free". Always knew the end game of FOSS was a tax supported infrastructure.
This is my sig.
There are not enough decent programmers to do this. Without market discipline, you will get a load of crap produced by people who can't code but want a free lunch.
The downside is the cost of hiring programmers will go through the roof, causing software industry to collapse.
WW2 was the New Deal on steroids.
WW2 was certainly a huge capital outlay, and brought people to work, but let's not forget some basic things:
a. WW2 took place 9 years after Roosevelt was elected. He had nearly a decade of New Deal to end the Depression and really didn't accomplish anything.
b. We are already in a war, two of them actually, and the economy still sucks. IF we wanted to raise the military budget to 6T a year, we would have WWII levels of spending on the military, and, what would that accomplish?
c. The prosperity of US postwar had more to do with the total destruction of American industrial rivals. Even GB, our ally, was so bankrupted by the war that she hit the skids. Continental Europe and Japan were destroyed, and the damage caused to Russia by the German invasion was so severe it doomed Russia to be a third world economy for decades afterwards. USA economy has been in relative decline as each of these players rebuilt and retooled.
You're also ignoring the rest of the world. As each country implemented Keynesian policies, their economies quickly recovered
IT was Keynesian policies they implemented, it was classic mercantilism, protecting their own industries as much as possible to let them rebuild, while selling their goods to the USA. This dysfunctional world economy has persisted for 60 years. First it depleted USA gold reserves so that in the 1970s the USA floated the dollar. Then, it depleted USA dollars so that in the 1980s the USA began borrowing, and then, when Bush finally pulls the plug on the whole damned thing by lowering the dollar, we're left with an economy that is reflective of what it really is, a large economic power with a bunch of smaller, but capable, economic powers, and a bunch of goods and a so-called free trading system that is actually irrationally priced due to the junkie's desire to keep the postwar ball rolling.
No more.
Americans aren't going to tolerate the economic dislocation and fiscal ruin caused by all the imports, and finally, you are going to have to see USA's trading partners actually construct meaningful domestic demand on their end, while at the same time the USA will have to build more of what it needs and stop treating the developing world as so much indentured servants.
This is my sig.
Great, a stimulus package that helps everyone else except for those people who happen to develop software for a living. It's not like jobs in those areas haven't already had problems with being outsourced over seas.
I develop a bit of software for a computer/network consulting company, so I'm insulated from that type of thing in general. But if I was writing software and charging a fair (important here) price, I don't think the government should be coming in to compete against me. This isn't like people are building bridges, but then only letting Fords across, or charging outrageous prices for tolls. The government builds a bridge because there's a need, and they are the ones to do it.
If they want to help, investigate and fully deal with the monopolies or unfair business practices out there that allow Microsoft (or whoever) to do what they do and force competition out of the market.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
The government could further mandate that public institutions use Open Source Software. Not only would this spur the demand but it would also save the government millions of dollars in licensing fees. Instead of just supporting a random assortment of OSS projects they should target the money to development they can directly benefit from.
Open Source Development does not run on money. You can't throw heaps of cash on a FOSS project an expect it to grow. Open Source works on TIME.
Outside of people following the industry, I don't think most people give open source much consideration one way or the other.
And Limbaugh uses Macs. Go figure.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Socialism is forced and about coercion. There is a big difference between a concept and adding an "ism" to the end of that word.
Working together towards a goal isn't socialism, esp. since you can use open source towards capitalist ends.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Didn't help them in the 90s.
Is Keynesian economics like XML and violence? If spending doesn't work, just use more?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
His understanding of software development and FOSS in The Conservative Nanny State was completely shallow and lacking.
Might actually be to tax banks. Its a thought because right now the problem is that banks aren't lending to cover their failed assets, a problem which TARP was supposed to fix but didn't.
Some new deal ideas to try and increase the velocity of money might not be so bad. In general, where money is being hoarded, it should be taxed, so that, holders -must- invest or spend it. And you might want to look at hoarding in other areas as well, and ask questions like, does buying gold or silver or other commodities constitute hoarding? I would think that it would, so you might tax that. Similarly, you might have to ask, well, do futures contracts constitute hoarding? If you want to put money in the hands of the most people, you probably need to make sure that no commodity sits unused.
This is my sig.
If we've learned anything is that governments need to be minimal and get out of the way, let corporations/investors make decisions on where to spend money. That is most efficient.
This could only hurt our competitiveness in the one industry we are the best at.
Reading the linked articles - he didn't actually 'call' the housing bubble. He just kept claiming there was one long enough that he was eventually 'right'.
Hell, even I can do that.
Government spending is third parties (bureaucrats) spending other people's money (taxpayer's money) on still other people (beneficiaries) with little or no regard to profit or loss.
Maybe you missed it in the summary, but the money is being allocated for economic stimulus. The point is not to make a profit or avoid a loss. In this metric, letting the government manage the funds is considerably more efficient than giving people a tax cut. At least the government can put the money to some lasting use. A tax cut will just increase the flow of wealth to China.
If the purpose is to help with the development of projects that directly compete with commercial products, that may not be good for the economy (at least on paper, see broken glass fallacy).
If the purpose is to further education, develop technology skills, and encourage the software development environment in the US, then it is great. Software and associated computer hardware are the core enabling technologies for most of our modern society.
If the products/development efforts include novel, state-of-the-art, research-based, innovative products, it will be better for the US in the long term. The US did this when they developed the core technology that became the Internet. Such a policy will help reverse the US brain drain and foster the competitiveness of US engineering talent. If done right its a big win (a big IF considering the depth of talent in Congress -- the opposite of progress).
Even companies should get some grants IF and ONLY IF their products developed with such funds would be available via an OSS license (Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Sun, even the DOD contractors). InQTel provided government funds to develop software packages for their problem space (most not OSS). NASA funds software development, a lot of which is open source. NSA supports SeLinux....
It would be monumental waste of money and it would be the worst PR ever for open source. This could undo FLOSS for many, many years.
Consider: right now only those who have motivation & skills to contribute, do so.
In govt-backed scheme, those who want to milk the money and produce crap, are the first and the most active (read: the most aggressive, politically connected, and successful in getting to the trough) in acquiring govt backing.
It all ends up like Ministry of Silly Walks: "Your walk is not particularly silly, is it? ... I feel with govt backing I could make it a lot more silly".
So the logical next step is to create monumental apparatus of control, verification and planning. Why, what else can government do? That eats up money, too.
There are already precedents for this. In Europe there are big "investment" programs into IT called "structural programs", planned and distributed every several years. Have you *ever*, I mean *ever* heard of or used a usable piece of software that came out of it? Most likely you never heard of it, not because money wasn't spent, but bc it never produced anything usable.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
This will be about as effective as the New Deal was (beyond the rhetoric) - all we'll need is this and a world war to pull us out of this depression too!
Open source effectively caps what you can charge for a closed source "light" version, what you can charge for a closed source software or workflow because there's the option to go with open source, deal with or fix its limitations.
Precisely. Open source turns basic software into a commodity, and that's why companies such as Microsoft dislike it. Their profit model is based on them being able to charge monopoly rates, not rates that a perfectly competitive market in software would support.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
If you want FOSS to function like commie "car", support this idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant
Hey, Linux already resembles AK-47 in its primitive robustness. Maybe we could fuse the two somehow?
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Not sure this has been discussed, but when software is put out by usually open sourcers, they take pride and work to make good quality software.
Bring unaccountable money to the table and not only with the above probably start slacking, but will bring every tom, dick and harry that can write something that compiles out of the woodwork If all I have to do to get a grant from the government is produce XXX lines of code, well that's an afternoon, it will do something, but lord knows it probably will be a POS. How is that useful or beneficially to the FOSS projects?
Another aspect is the perception that OSS is socialistic. From what I can tell, most projects are actually closer to what would be called a monarchy as far as approval processes and direction. The reason it works so well is that a good monarchy (where those in charge are actually looking to the benefits of all and just aren't power hungry people looking to buy votes) is the most stable and beneficial long term arrangement.
Bring the government into this type of arrangement and your gonna start having quotas on who can contribute to a project, complaints and even lawsuits because if some really bad coder can't get his stuff in and thus can't get paid, he's going to say that the project leaders are just biased.
I realize this is chain of thought, but would like to get some of these concepts out there.
EVERYTHING can be built, designed, manufactured, maintained, and derived as open source via free use copyrights and non-profit organizations and co-ops! all we need is the initial start-up funds to get an non-profit business going and we can easily manufacture the best cars, computers, hot water heaters, homes, food, and provide the best health care, insurance, maintenance, ISPs, and recycling centers, et cetera (i forgot to mention entertainment venues, and quality film and music producing orgs).
why not drop billions on revitalizing our country through the development of free public services and organizations that have the sole purpose of enhancing the health, happiness, and effectiveness of the people in our society!
DON'T CAPITALIZE! CO-OPERATE! AND FREE EVERYTHING!
Nnope. Profit of *the most expensive supplier* goes to zero. Even less efficient suppliers bankrupt. The rest (more efficient suppliers) keep their profits.
Python is nice quick and flexible... but it provides so much rope a monkey would hang the whole ecosystem with it. -- in
Government spending does not stimulate the economy. It takes money FROM the economy and redistributes it to politically favored and connected groups. Bastiat recognized this 160 years ago. Keynesian economic stimulation has never worked before, during, or since Keynes lived. http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
That would make as much sense as blaming the game.
The sacred and the propane
Effectively, it's the minimum salary required to entice the owner-operator to operate the business. If someone's earning more than that (say, making millions) and hasn't yet been undercut, it's due to the market for one reason or another being uncompetitive.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
e) People were generally more frugal back then and did not just thow their money (and credit) around. They tended to save more and spend more wisely and acted for the longer term. Today's people are different: they have credit cards and do everything for instant gratification. Today's people are not prepared to cut their consumerism to rebuild the economy over a 5 or 10 year period. That's why it has been a lot easier to just print more money and increase the national debt than it has been to pushing up taxes or interest rates or whatever is really required to improve true economic health.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Having a day job has always interfered with Tux Paint development. :)
Why can't we keep this available as some kind of micro-economy?
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Fossetts.
Well, OK.. just issuing this here as some kind of trail balloon. But it's probably dead already.
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- aqk
F U
Surely this cannot be bad for freenode. Show me the money!... errr, I mean donation :( :| :) ;-)
Don't do it!
You know the government ruins everything it gets involved with.
What will they want in return for all that money?
Back doors into security applications? Built-in ways to trace who made a computer file? Spyware?
They may not want it now, but once the Open Source Community is dependent on government money, you KNOW they'll demand it . . . and get it.
For heaven's sake, JUST SAY NO!