Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FOSS Development As Economic Stimulus

Posted by kdawson on from the piece-of-the-action dept.

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.'"

2 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Possible Concerns by DreamsAreOkToo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:What about Microsoft? by rlanctot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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?"

    Isn't capitalism supposed to be based on a free market economy? I'm sure that the government hires Adobe and Microsoft to work on software projects they don't readily talk about, doesn't that compete with FOSS software? Seems to me corporate America is all for the free market economy except when it's not to their favor.