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Should Obama Give Stimulus To Open Source?
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder posits a deeper relationship between government and open source than was proposed in last week's open letter to Obama calling for broader open source adoption: economic stimulus. Since software vendors urged the president to go open source last week, security companies 'have raised scary points about vulnerabilities in open source,' suggesting they could step in to help secure an open source switch. Rather than opt for this kind of security through obscurity, Snyder argues in favor of earmarking funds for open source development to instead ensure security through transparency. 'Once the government expands its use and support of open source, venture money — which is drying up in the current recession — would again start flowing to those small companies, allowing them to hire or rehire some of the tens of thousands of unemployed IT workers,' he argues."
That's like an ANTI-Stimulus to us software developers trying to make a living.
No. Why? Because open source isn't typically a large lobbying group.
Next.
If FOSS is A: better than the alternative and B: less expensive than the alternative then why would it need taxpayer handouts?
Besides, how many FOSS lobbyists are there in Washington?
THL phish sticks
Probably not. The best things to do are twofold. Firstly, ensure a level playing field by mandating open and free formats, protocols and standards for all government operations. That's what Open Source really needs to compete and it's a good thing from the point of view of openness of information, maintenance and future-proofing anyway. The second thing that the government should probably do is to bloody well start doing things in-house again. None of this outsourcing to massive corporations that spend 90% of the money on managerial salaries and bonuses and
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Hell no!!!
This is a great idea... If nothing else, it might help induce certain monopolies to become more competitive and re-focus on creating better software, rather than spending its resources trying to crush its opponents.
And, as much as I would resist the government getting involved in standards-making and enforcement, it wouldn't be out of line for them to exert themselves toward making sure certain monopolies don't subvert the existing independent standards-making bodies through bribery and infiltration.
The open source movement is exactly what should be funded. Create a grant application program for open source projects.
I had an argument with a microsoftie a while ago, who was convinced that open source was destroying the software industry. I countered that all it was doing was creating a rich infrastructure on top of which other industry could be built.
The open source infrastructure is a national (international) treasure that, by making infrastructure basically free, like roads and bridges, makes other projects that would have been too big and expensive to develop from scratch, almost trivial to develop.
See:
http://2038bug.com/free-software.html
"State of Free and Open Source Software 2008 - A summary of the misgivings of the industry"
1: You don't create jobs by adding unfair competition to struggling companies(how can companies compete with someone getting guaranteed money with no need to turn a profit?)
2: I'm pretty sure there are international laws in place which don't look too kindly on this.
The fools in Washington are led around by their nose (and their peckers) by lobbying dollars. Open source in the government is never going to happen...especially with "quality" vendors like Diebold and SAIC jumping in to "fix things."
Well not quite as far but it will devalue the work of software developers and put money in the wrong hands.
Open Source at least the GNU variation of it, doesn't value the creators of the work, and assumes their time making such device is such a joy that a job well done is pay enough per say. Sure you can make money off of supporting your code consulting services etc... But the value as a developer is reduced (As there are people who just want to code, and eat, but not run small consulting businesses or deal with people saying I want X or Y etc...) By putting a Dollar Price tag on this I could see companies firing their full time developers and pay table scraps to many Open Source Developers (Which would make you wished they outsourced to India) to get their code done. Then pay the real bucks to full time people who will support and consult the product.
Without the money for Open Source most companies yea they will stay closed source but they will be paying software developers more to make the software. So that will be more money going in the Middle of the economy so it can Trickle Up and Down and a lot faster too.
But putting large funds for Open Source will mean companies who really don't care about software will get a lot of money pay some open source developers pocket change and state they are open source and keep the rest of the money for themselves.
Republicans they want to tax the rich less even at a loss of services.
Democrats want to tax the rich more for services that have so many rules and loopholes that only the rich are able to get resources to correctly apply for.
It reminds me a 5/6 years ago My state had a grant for "small" tech companies to funding for education for their employees so my boss tried to sign me up for .NET, CISCO, and/or Red Hat certification training. The first time it was rejected because they wanted more detail on each of the training, the second time it was rejected because they were Out of State classes (We live near the border of other states and you will actually travel a lot further to the In State classes. But every it gets rejected for some reason or an other we had to go back and redo everything as class schedules changed and pricing as well we had to find different classes all every time. We later gave it up as the process of getting funding for these classes cost more then just going for the class itself.
And who got these grants the large consulting firms (as many large consulting firm is often technically a small business as they are usually under 100 employees) Who have the resources to do all the legwork over and over again as it would benefit hundred workers not 3.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
leave red hat out of it :-) at least they haven't joined the dark side
No, Obama should do what presidents are supposed to do: manage government. This stimulus crap is just that... crap. The only people that are going to benefit from the stimulus are the politicians and the people they are in bed with.
Firstly, ensure a level playing field by mandating open and free formats, protocols and standards for all government operations.
How is that anywhere close to possible? Digital TV, for instance, uses MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio, the same non-free patented formats used in DVD-Video. Or would you have the U.S. government splurge on another round of coupons for converter boxes that can do Theora and Vorbis?
Dear Mr President, You really should be buying American products in order to stimulate economic recovery in the United States of America. May I take this opportunity to remond you that MICROSOFT is an AMERICAN CORPORATION! BUY AMERICAN! BUY AMERICAN! We love you, Mr President Sincerely, Steve Ballmer
If government money were given to open-source projects, there would be several issues which could cause big problems.
First of all, the big idea behind a lot of open source projects is that anyone can download the source code and contribute. How do you decide who gets how much of this government money? This aspect already prevents many OSS projects from going closed-source because it is nearly impossible to gather together all members of the development community to agree on legal terms (or you just give some developers the finger and illegally drive off with their products). I can see how there may be exceptions, but surely you can see my point. Secondly, a government-funded OSS development team would basically become a government software company, competing directly with commercial developers trying to make a living in these rough times. To me, this seems wrong on many levels. But, since it's not really happening, I'm not gonna get worked up about it.
For most businesses, the cost of software represents a substantial portion of their cost structure. With open source software, the businesses will be better able to retain employees, which will strengthen the economy.
The beauty of open source software is that its value to society far exceeds the cost of the effort consumed by creating it. While it does require a fixed, up-front effort, the payoff is limited only by the number of people able to use such software. Contrast this with the closed source model, in which, in an effort to maximize vendor profit, always leaves out those unable or unwilling to pay.
Most Americans work in low-margin business - doing things like agriculture, retail, etc... - providing the goods and services necessary for civilized life. It is these businesses for which the cost of software means the difference between laying off, and retaining employees. Funding OSS development is like giving them an interest-free loan which never has to be repaid. But better yet, the benefit to the economy as a whole far exceeds the cost of creating OSS.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
He should determine what's in the best interest of the contry and set policies based on that. I'm sick of people talking about how Washington GIVES to this group or that group. If we need to stimulate the economy, the result is that certain groups will receive money. The result is the same, but the mindset of "Washington GIVES" vs. "Washington does what's in the best interest of the country" is very different. The main problems with the stimulus is that much of it was about GIVING to certain groups then justifying how it would stimulate the economy rather than figuring out what will best stimulate the economy then figuring out where to spend the money.
Bureau of Open Source Software Technology: 80% of funds received
This bureau will consist of individuals attending seminars in the Bahamas and Hawaii to determine the best Open Source methods. Limo's will of course be required in all travel modes to ensure a comfortable atmosphere when deciding upon Open Source issues.
Result: Except for the Office of Open Source Technology, everyone will continue using existing vendors because there was no funding available to migrate all the databaes and custom applications to the Open Source format.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
now if she had said, "show me the money shot" i would have had some sympathy.
Obama promised me a house and car, I WANT THEM NOW.
Signed,
An Obama Voter
No
Come on people. Get a clue. All Obama is doing is borrowing from future generations. This country is drowning in debt, yet we want more "stimulus" aka pork barrel projects? We need to cut back on spending period, not continue to spend until the dollar is worth nil and the Chinese and Middle Eastern banks own the US.
The US economy is crumbling, and giving away dollars willy-nilly is a big part of it.
I pay my taxes, I'm saving for my kids' college, and I'm living within my means. This deficit spending, borrowing money for every little project, HAS to stop. Pay off the debt now!
Give money to people for Open Source and you'll have a ton of shitty projects designed solely to get money from the Government.
Most of the rest of the projects will be companies claiming free money for projects they would have paid for in-house, but they could get the government to pay for a portion of it instead. The projects won't be useful to anyone else, and especially won't be useful without the in-house project that goes with it.
And no, GPL'ing all the government-funded software isn't the answer, either. At the very least, the companies will just find a way around that license.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
All economists agree that government spending is important during times of contraction, as it helps to make up the shortfall in the economy from the side of the consumer, and helps "stimulate" the economy. Another advantage of government spending is that it's usually an investment in infrastructure that will last many decades and provide a platform for future growth in the economy.
However, the United States has not taken advantage of the good times. They have failed to reduce their debt during those times- and in fact have increased it to record proportions. Not only that, but they have not even managed to maintain their infrastructure. This is at both the state and federal level. So we went INTO this mess already up to our ears in debt.
People fail to understand that every dollar the US prints reduces the real value of all the other dollars that currently exist by a tiny fraction - because after all, fiat currency is only hard to forge pieces of paper. Once the shared belief in the value of that worthless piece of paper is destroyed, it will quickly return to its intrinsic value - ZERO. Ask Mugabe.
Printing trillions of dollars at a time when you are already close to 60 trillion (when you count social security) in debt, and the WORLD GDP is only 150 trillion, will destroy the currency in short order. The US can't afford to bail ANYONE out - they are too deep in debt already. Yet the political temptation to appear to "do something" is too strong - despite the fact that it's already too late. The "stimulus" is currently designed to put almost $300BN back into the pockets of the consumer in the form of tax relief - consumers that are already deep in debt. That 300BN will disappear in a couple months, as people pay their overdue credit cards, mortgage payments and utility bills, or buy houses thinking that this is "the bottom" (HAH! The "bottom" will be in 2015 or so, because all bubbles are V shaped and this one started in 1998) - and THEN WHAT?
Well, $126BN will be spent on infrastructure - great, let's do what FDR did and build, or re-build, interstates. Surely a plan that worked 70 years ago is still valid today, right? So after giving jobs to all the immigrants again (because who ELSE works with a shovel nowadays?), what's left? A few hundred billion to be spent giving cheap drugs to the elderly and other programs to win political points. Oh and NASA is going to get $2BN, so that should cover the fuel for 2 shuttle launches...
Frankly by the time enough "infrastructure" is built that the government begins to require turbines from GE for their wind farms, or technological equipment for the new "smart grid", we will all be out of a job already, burning money by the bucketful in winter in order to keep warm.
Oh and don't forget Chrysler and GM's "recovery plan" is to apparently ask the government for more money every quarter.
America still hasn't woken up and realized that this is not just another "recession". This is the breaking of the previous consumer model, and a complete dissolution of the "American way of life". We can't ALL have SUV's, we can't ALL have big screen TV's, and we can't ALL live in dream houses. Especially not when it's bought on "credit". Well America, the credit has run out.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
(how can companies compete with someone getting guaranteed money with no need to turn a profit?)
Think of it as a government contract. They give you money, and you develop free software for them. This isn't a tax cut handout, this is public works.
Rather than promote just open or just closed source, I think it would be far more productive if government agencies would be required to consider both open and closed source solutions alongside each other, and then select the best candidate based on 'best-fit' for any given task.
The states distribute the funds. The funding is specific on what it is used for. The House of Representatives are really the decision makers there. They are the ones with the power to spend money.
Sic Semper MicroSoft
I think the guy has enough problems with fixing our problems in America than to worry about Open Source software.
How? Who knows. Some lobby group somewhere will have an idea. Careful what you wish for...
Apparently Barack Obama has been giving his wife some special stimulation. [SFW]
This wins, hands down, as the gayest slashdot article of the year. Good going to the retards who thought this one up.
But he should hire companies to contribute to specific projects (those project should be of interest to the state in some way). The check over these companies is simple: ask the project about the contributions of said company. If the company is the sole contributer to the project the project should be checked by a different (random) company or a coder hired by the state.
embrace open source
Obama is an elected official, he is obliged to serve the will of the people of the United States.
To be isolationist about it: this is a stimulus from US taxpayers for the recovery of the US economy. Open Source knows no borders, stimulus into open source will benefit the whole world, not just the US.
To be union-minded about it: open source is a disruptive technology, it destroys established highly profitable service industries and replaces their products with free alternatives. It reduces the scale of the software economy from one that includes compensation for development, sales, marketing, investor returns and support to one that only generates significant revenue in support. In short, open source is a short-term net destroyer of jobs.
To be PAC minded about it: open source doesn't have the deep pockets of the established software industry. There are 25 closed source lobbyists in Washington D.C. for every open source one.
In summary: the American voter doesn't think beyond next week's paycheck, whether or not they can afford the next larger flat-screen TV, or to keep that 4500 sq. ft. McMansion they bought 4 years ago when the balloon payment comes due. Obama is up for re-election, and he has a mandate to make Joe the Plumber happy before November 2012. Investments in Open Source have long-term global returns that are difficult to demonstrate during a 30 second sound-bite on the nightly news. Regardless of how massive that ultimate ROI might be, it's not something that will put Barack back in office in 2012.
Sorry OSS, you are noble, just and worthy, but you've just got no chance of making it on American Idol.
Getting the government unhooked from the Microsoft money train would have far-reaching effects in the industry.
First, you have a large segment of the IT world who know nothing outside of the Microsoft way of doing things. Changing up what they're familiar with, and many paid to go to school to learn (hello all you MCSEs), renders many of these people unemployable.
Second, for many government systems, there's a lot of aftermarket products commonly used that will be rendered obsolete. Antivirus, backup, etc. etc.
If Obama's worried about saving or creating jobs, brash action isn't the way to go about it.
If FOSS is A: better than the alternative and B: less expensive than the alternative then why would it need taxpayer handouts?
That's the line Microsoft trots out anytime there's a hearing about giving preference to FOSS software. MS says there doesn't need to be any preference. You made a good point about FOSS lobbyists, I'd add that FOSS doesn't have marketing budget, either. No reps wining and dining the execs, calling state legislators and reminding them how much money they're getting from proprietary software, no rides with Ballmer in the private jet.
It may take a mandate or at least a preference to get FOSS in the door. If it's a preference, then I can see legions of MS reps sending out boilerplate justification packages complete with TCO and ROI documentation that MS paid for.
So, yeah, it may take some government money and a preference to FOSS to break that marketing barrier. Hey, this is our money they're spending.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
out of their beds and back over the border, and you will do 1000x as good.
Sure the government should use open source and contribute to open source, but they shouldn't just throw money at it.
If we continue with the current plan it won't matter anyway, by this time next year the DOW will be below !000 and we will have 25% inflation. When we are spending $8 on loaf of bread, $12 for a #1 combo at McDonalds, software is going to be the last thing on everyones minds.
Mitch Kapor's "Chandler" project (or was it Rhapsody? hmmm). Lots of money, lots of objectives (technical, societal, and even some for end users), and several "rock star" developers.
They were profiled by mainstream media on a weekly basis. Somebody even wrote a fawning book about it. The results? Zip.
Then there's Mr. Negroponte's "One Laptop Per Child" project, which is not open source software, but might have similarities to a hypothetical publicly funded OSS project. Again, too many objectives, too many opinions, too many egos. The private sector allocates resources more efficiently (and ruthlessly).
That's what you get for stiffing her the last time, cheapskate!
Free Martian Whores!
And not with the expenditure of money, at least not through handouts. I have not read and will not RTFA because I can tell you exactly what this piece is inspired by: jealousy. I want my piece of the handout too!
The government should simply mandate the use of open standards, not to include anything invented or bastardized by Microsoft. (That is a redundant statement but it simply must be made.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Part of the advantage of open source is that they are independent of the corporate world because they are not financially beholden to corporations in the same way a closed source project is.
Taking all that wonderful independence, then making them dependent on the government effectively gives the government influence over these open source projects, which to me takes some of the gleam off of the whole open source movement.
There may very well be a real advantage to having the government make part of the computer infrastructure "free" the same way the government makes roads "free", but for now I'd rather the open source movement be left to its own devices. If a nation becomes dependent on an open source project and that project becomes financially threatened, then sure; that government can prop up that open source project with tax dollars, but until then let's leave it alone.
Geez, I almost sound like one of those libertarian wackos.
Open source software seems to be moving along at a good pace all by itself. It doesn't need any help. Give the money to someone who needs it.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
FOSS (free/open-source software) has been doing fine without government funding so far. Federal money always comes with strings attached. Do you really want Congress (or more likely some low-level, unqualified bureaucrat) meddling in your development project?
Now, funding for the government to migrate to using to FOSS would make a lot of sense to me, but directly funding development? No thanks. I code better without Uncle Same breathing down my neck.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
to think of ways to set aside funds for small businesses; ways that would encourage them to adopt and develop open source software.
We might take the Depression era grants that went to artists to decorate many public spaces as a model. Modest grants to people who work in information technology to create freely redistributable solutions public informatics problems would have several important advantages.
(1) Such a plan maintains a domestic informatics workforce in the face of increased pressure to move jobs to low wage countries. Maintaining and increasing the skills of this workforce will make it attractive for industry to turn to it when the economy improves.
(2) Mandating interoperability with open, non-proprietary standards improves the competitiveness of the domestic IT industry, where businesses are too often driven by premature efforts to create some kind of market niche where they ar protected from competition.
(3) The grants should require that the small businesses have a plant to use the work to increase their capabilities, and particularly favor the development of new kinds of technology or application for technology.
(4) Focusing the stimulus money on small businesses allows technology bets to be spread across a greater variety of approaches; it is less likely to introduce what is in effect central planning into engineering decisions. It is also unlikely to strengthen the hand of one big player against all the others because of its skill at obtaining Federal money.
(5) Low margins and ready sweat equity will encourage greater adoption of free software.
(6) There is already a Federal mechanism for doing this; the Small Business Innovative Research grant program.
SBIR currently pays for mostly a lot of boondoggles, although even boondoggles if they are kept close enough to home can be stimulative. However, with the right requirements placed on grant applications the value created can be maximized -- important if we want to avoid the inflationary effects of stimulation. Favoring free software would mean that nearly any work done in an area results in public value. Even bad or poorly implemented systems contain lessons that can be studied and built upon; when the system is proprietary, those lessons die.
Often the problem with SBIR is that work doesn't really result in something that can be commercialized. Even if the system is good, often people can't market it. So perhaps the most politically effective way to do this is to require that if the developer does not make a commercial success of the software within a fixed period, that it be released under a free license.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm glad you added the fact that you were being serious, so instead of modding you up for Funny, I can mod you down for troll.
I would vote for keep the government out of the development directly, but provide money for Universities, schools, and others in education circles to provide education on using, creating, marketing, philosophy, and so on of open source software. It is the new edge of of IT curriculum, so it should be included.
I would also vote for putting the money behind open transparent industry standards so both open and closed source can save money by not having everyone reinvent the dam wheel.
I would throw in reform to the patten and copyright laws so they are something that does not look like they came out of some sort of by product of the Spanish inquisition, and they stop hobbling innovation and lower cost.
I might even vote yes to open source government type grants that are some how similar to grants for other projects, or education academic research type grants, but for the most part I do not believe government direct money is all that useful.
Living in Chile
I would say the stimulus should be supplied in the form of requiring open source in all government activities, but principally in the area of education.
Teach the kids how to use and interact with computers, not train them to work with a closed source monopolistic entity, which thereby entrenches said monopoly. The advantages would be many-fold, not least that there would be less ID10Ts running nodes on botnets, less time wasted waiting for said closed source monopoly to fix their damn product, and more opportunity for innovation without massive financial investment.
I'm not calling for all schools to move to linux, but I am calling for more education in the area of what a computer actually does, right down to the bare metal. Even now I am amazed at the number of people I meet who think that stuff just "floats around" on the internet. They have no idea that the computer they are using at home is pretty much equivalent to the one that's serving the content. They have no idea that when they are sold an ADSL connection at "up to 8Mbit" speeds, the "up to 8Mbit" only refers to their connection to the ISP, NOT the connection to the server providing the content. All this leads to FUD by the media and unnecessary hand wringing and legislation, which could be completely avoided by explaining the facts much earlier in the persons life, ie. at school.
I tend to think of computers and more specifically programming, in terms of written language. In past ages very few people knew how to write (or read), so that if you wanted to communicate something without being face to face, you had to employ somebody else to do it for you. As soon as reading and writing became something that everybody learned, technology accelerated at an exponential rate, and our standards of living followed.
Equating reading and writing to being able to personally control a computer, however simply you do it - scripting for instance, you can see that by allowing proprietary concerns to control information, we are taking a step backwards in general access to information. This does not mean that proprietary concerns should be banned, just that there should be other options obviously available. By force feeding our kids MS software and environments, we are conditioning them against anything outside that.
I am working on training people to use other options, so that they don't have to pay just to add another product to their website, or to make a photo the right size for display on a page. It is possible to do most things your average home user needs without relying on a centrally controlled proprietary commercial organisation. I am not by any means a Libertarian, but surely access to alternatives is part of a Libertarian outlook. Forcing the next generation to learn only how to operate commercial software is verging on brainwashing.
Please don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm talking about teaching everybody to program computers. I'm interested in showing them what programming is, and how it relates to the machine. Even if they never go on to program in their whole life, they will still have that background knowledge available so that when they get fed bullshit, they can detect it. I am not a professional historian, but having been taught basic historical facts at school, I can see when someone else is making stuff up.
Foster intelligence, not familiarity with products.
If you disagree with my opinion, ask yourself - who does it benefit to train school kids on only Microsoft products ?
a) The people
b) Microsoft
The last point I have to make is that because the publics knowledge of the internet and computing is so limited, when governments create massive databases on their citizens, restrict access to information, ban or limit certain protocols etc. etc. the general publics reaction is Meh ! They don't know what they're losing because they never experienced it. That cannot be right. It becomes difficult to argue politically for the "right thing to do" when the electorate have no idea what you're talking about.
If they were informed on the subject, then they have the right to disagree, but to make decisions from a position of ignorance benefits nobody.
I understand the sentiments of your post, but I have to disagree with the premise. While the single, middle manager doesn't need a big house and SUV, for most parents, these are not optional extras.
My father was a factory worker, and managed to afford a house and raise four children. As an engineer, I make more money than my father ever did as a factory worker, yet have less than he did when he was my age.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You DO realize that government money comes with government control. Your open source project uses encryption, better provide key escrow for the NSA. You're doing an open source browser - better provide government mandated content filtering.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Obama should give money in the stimulus towards open source software and mandate its use but this doesn't automatically equate to job creation or transparency. Indeed as an open source user, this is a victory to me. Though, generally-speaking, because open source software is extensively debugged and peer reviewed, it is more stable and doesn't require an army to maintain it, I would not expect a large number of jobs to be created. However, a good reason for open source is an open, enforced standard of interoperability where the source code is readily viewable and accessible without spartan licensing. What we have now is a flash player for Linux (binary only) that still lags behind its Windows/Mac counterparts. I should not be forced into using IE if I need access to a government website. I don't really see how this equates to more transparency other than the still smaller crowd of Linux/BSD users can obtain the same information. Transparency is really only as good as the information the government will post as publicly available, regardless of chosen platform. Transparency begins with the willingness of government to disclose ALL of the information.
I wasn't trolling, only pointing out that such actions reward all the wrong-doers from the bottom-up /and/ the top-down. That, if we implement such a system, all those who want(ed) to succeed on their own (and who consequently make America so great) will be punished for it. It /will/ be the decline of America, at least hear me on this point.
Bush has already provided the biggest stimulus open-source will ever get - legions of unemployed programmers looking to do something interesting with their time! Working on an open-source project is certainly my plan, should the axe ever fall.
If I'm unemployed even for two weeks, some worthy project is getting 20 hours of my time that they didn't get when times were good. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand, it's one more nail in the coffin of certain expensive proprietary solutions.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
It's also likely to be higher quality code. There are not that many companies willing to jump through the hoops necessary to contract out to the government, and the ones that do think that Citrix will solve the government's problems.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Defecit spending should only be done for things that a) you would be doing anyway, or b) that have long term value. Stimulus money should only go to projects that have a effect on the way .gov does business, like Apache, Sendmail, Bind, Snort, Linux, NMAP, Wireshark and possibly Mozilla, Python, Debian and Postgres. Other efforts like giving money to OVDB to develop as an augmentation of the NVD system, which has a horrible tendancy to not contain enough information, would also be a good investment.
Spyder
Well, I know this'll be consigned to the Briney depths of Score: 1, but what the hell, I'm feeling futile today, I guess.
We don't need money. We need code.
Create a new agency in charge of adapting and extending open source packages for use across the entire federal government.
This saves lots of money spent on vendor packages. In return we get high-quality professionally developed patches released back to the community.
I'd actually like to watch my "tax dollars at work" in this way.
Why not give some level of tax breaks to corporations who open source their code. They're essentially donating their code, and we give tax breaks for donations all the time (so long as it's to an applicable entity). Valuing the code for the tax break would be difficult, as it probably should be measured by how much use comes from the code, but it might be easier to work off of how much income the code generates for the company, maybe 5% off taxes for incomes generated from the project or something. But it'd provide a really nice incentive for sharing innovation.
(At work, can't read the dude's blog.)
Money has a way of ruining software, any sort of funds directed at any open source projects which are not directly relevant to the government's functions probably isn't a good thing.
If they really wanted to help open source, then just change the procurement rules.
If you want to sell an x86 board to the federal government, you will open up the bios, make it public domain, and it will be hosted on a federal .gov website.
Or how about chipsets, nics, sound and graphics chips? Now we're talking.
Make the hardware companies make their money by producing good hardware. Shock, horror! Don't force them to, just don't buy their crap if they don't comply.
Or if you want to sell an OS to the federal government, you must provide public domain code for imaging your OS. This could be the code they use themselves, so it would get thoroughly tested. Granted this doesn't help open source, but it would make my life a hell of a lot easier.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
If dishonor pays better, then why not be a scoundrel?
I, a software developer, should pony up tax dollars to be used to create software that competes with what I create? And this will somehow stimulate the economy?
The only thing I've learned from this whole economic mess is that throwing money at problems doesn't fix them.
It prolongs them.
If inflated house prices result in a crash - giving money to people buy houses and artificially keep the price higher; is only going to keep the crash going longer, albeit more slowly.
Giving money to car companies who suck are only going to encourage them to continue to suck. Sucking is now a viable business model.
Do you all remember back when everyone was saying how Netscape was doomed to fail because MS was a monopoloy!!!! Remember that? Here's the truth, Netscape sucked. When FireFox came around, MS still had the same level of control - IE was still free, IE was still included with the OS.
But FireFox didn't suck - so people used it.
In areas where open source doesn't suck - people use it (servers, mostly). Areas where it does suck - people don't (Desktop).
Devoting money to 'open source' is silly because it's forcing tax payers to 'buy' crappy software. If it worked, as was great, people would use it, people would even pay for it, voluntarily.
And, in the extreme situation, where the influx of money makes open source more viable - once the government stops throwing money at it, and open source is more robust, stable, and performant than closed source software - congrats; you've just displaced an entire industry of software developers.
And because of the nature of open source software - now that you aren't funding it with tax dollars - it doesn't get funded. It's all open. Everyone has at it. Not just the US - any country that wants it. You've just paid the development costs for China's new web servers while putting Joe Blow the local software developer out of business.
I think that the govt. should sponsor selected Open Source projects. One to calculate income tax would be quite reasonable.
Any form that the govt. requires should be a reasonable project to be sponsored. And any application that the govt. needs for it's own internal use.
I'm against govt. money just being grants. That feels like a bad idea. But hiring people to build carefully selected Open Source projects should be a good thing. Probably the BSD or MIT license should be chosen, as companies should be able to take the developed source code and run with it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Hopefully government workers aren't watching TV when they're at work.
Some government employees have to watch the public service announcements and training videos that the government produces. I'd bet that most US residents who watch TV can recall a commercial for the Federal Citizen Information Center in Pueblo, Colorado.
How about we get DRM under control? Maybe repeal DMCA & "SonnyBono"--to get Disney, the MPAA & RIAA off corporate welfare? How would THAT be for stimulus!!?!!
Closed source vendors: "Use only closed source! Open source is dangerous!" Free Software advocates: "Use only Free Software! Closed source is wrong!" Politicians: "Let's compromise. We'll make it half-open. We'll just enact this legislation that imposes just a few minor restrictions on the GPL..."
Keep the damn politicians away, ok? They are already free to use the software but they have nothing we need. Everything they touch turns to shit.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"You are in competition with everyone, and if you don't get in there and fight, well, you're not gonna get a very big piece of the pie."
The assumptions being made here are where I think you're losing the GGP. It's entirely possible to compete without 'fighting', or more importantly, as you insinuate, 'fight dirty'. And, frankly, having a 'very big piece' of the (mythical) pie is not necessarily the best goal to have in mind. Finally, you are assuming a discrete world with discrete resources - that there is a pie, and that pie is only so big and does not change.
Now, one could argue that the pie is actually shrinking, what with the economic and environmental disasters we're facing. But our ability to increase said pie is not gone. Further, you can act virtuously while you do this. It is not unethical to not tell anyone else about a job you're looking at getting (it would be unethical to hide it from them, though, or lie about it when asked) - but the comparison of doing a job (delivering a service in exchange for money) to sharing code is not there. Simply because code is 'open' does not mean any monkey can use it, or use it well.
In fact, open source very likely expands the pie faster - and while it may seem against the individual best interest to open source, it is very much in the common interest to do so. Code gets better, faster, when it's open. It's far more likely to get into the hands of people passionate about the task at hand, rather than just into the hands of people being paid to do the task. This is good, because ultimately you, as a human being, don't care about the value of the code (which, outside of a context, is equal to nothing). What you care about is the value you get from what the code does.
And, ultimately, what code does is remove redundant tasks that are inefficient to do manually by a human. This removal of redundancy means more things can be made faster, and humans are freed to do more sophisticated tasks - or nothing at all, if they so choose.
In the aggregate, this is a good thing. In the specific, the difficulty is having the end value pass through to the people doing the work. That is one of the sophisticated problems I wish we had more time and energy to address. But deciding to limit open source is to decide to limit the pie growth - and that's ultimately self-defeating, keeping you 'in your place'.
The fact is that the impression you're implying of the 'real world' is one we're habituated to. We expect it to not be all puppies and ponies. But the people who get ahead choose to rework some set of assumptions that free them from a system that is very, very good at keeping wealth and knowledge in the hands of the few upon the backs of the many. The ethical person should start by rejecting those premises and finding ways to accrue wealth, knowledge and anything else of value through means that do not screw the people around them.
Of course, if all you actually care about is the Benjamins, then all of that is meaningless. But I'd posit that such a mindset is actually terribly regressive - it's a primitive thought pattern barely worthy of your average mammal, nevermind humans. There has to be something more to it.
[Ego]out
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Then again, I can see republicans cry foul as most useful open source stuff is done outside the US. The again, this would all be resolved if the US gov't commits to OSS (the 'F/' part is another discussion)
How substantial?
Most Americans work in low-margin business - doing things like agriculture, retail, etc... - providing the goods and services necessary for civilized life. It is these businesses for which the cost of software means the difference between laying off, and retaining employees.
I want to see your numbers here.
The custom accounting system for your farm or ranch costs $500 - and demands nothing more than a P3 with Win 98 and 16 MB RAM.
Farm Software Products, Farm Works Software
It is trivially easy to find free templates and tutorials for Excel and Quick Books
---and, of course, there are far more expense software and service bundles out there for the giant produce packing plant, the poultry king with 10 million birds.
The geek needs to be realistic about his place in a world where a thirty-year old Ford tractor, not kept up for show, sells for $10,000 - $20,000.
FOSS is no magic wand that significantly cuts costs or saves jobs here.
Contrast this with the closed source model, in which, in an effort to maximize vendor profit, always leaves out those unable or unwilling to pay.
Well, of course, they leave out those unwilling to pay.
So does Sun when it trims the full-time development team for StarOffice/OpenOffice to 24.
There is nothing that insulates the FOSS developer from economic realities.
The grants dry up. The corporate sponsor pulls out. The bank cuts you off. The mortgage payment is due next week.
FOSS is a development model. It is not a revenue model. In hard times you have to find a way to make ends meet.
You have to go where the money is.
It won't make a damn bit of difference if your software is still being released under the GPL.
Pretending for a second that there's a snowballs chance in hell, who is it you think would be paid for for the work? When you fund open source *someone* gets paid. Maybe your concerned about the open source CEO will shuffle funds into shells outside the country? Or pay out the open C-level team bonuses?
My understanding is it's the developers on funded projects that get paid for doing the work. Which is probably a good thing.
Quack, quack.
See subject.
From where I'm sliding, we're sliding into a corporate oligarchy - assuming we're not already there. I think you vastly underestimate how much money affects the outcome of elections.
[Ego]out
In the big omnibus let's put everything we can including the kitchen sink bill that Obama just signed in Denver (also known as HR1 or the "Supplimental Appropriations for Job Preservation and Creation Act") there is section 4206 under the Medicaid provisions for a "study on the availability of open source health care technology systems".
Yeah, this is pretty dense and buried way deep into the bill, but somebody must like open source "technology" in some form or another in congress. I really wonder who shoved this little provision into that bill and even more wonder if anybody else is paying attention to this being a part of that trillion dollars getting spent.
I sure would like to read that study when it comes back, and it specifically is to compare open source vs. proprietary software.
Too bad this had to be buried in a law that nobody is going to be reading.
I mean, if we take the stimulus money, will all FOSS developers have their salaries capped at $500K like the banks?
The horror!
Please let your federal government representative know the following: "The nation is demanding and spending billions to ensure that we have a high-performance Health Information Technology infrastructure. The ARRA of 2009 allows proprietary companies to put up tollbooths and black boxes everywhere at taxpayer expense with little or no guarantees of the ability of the public to audit, innovate, study, fix or extend the software to ensure high performance, privacy, security, fitness, or upgradeablility can occur. Without a ban on federal money for purchasing proprietary Electronic Medical Record software and requirements for licenses such as the Affero General Public License that safeguard public rights and ensures sustainability, we will become a nation of renters of poorly performing health IT software infrastructure that taxpayers paid dearly for, and will pay for again and again."
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Well, I can think of one thing wrong with it. How do you insure that only American software developers benefit from such the stimulus? After all, the stimulus is for helping Americans and I assume most Open Source projects know no national boundaries
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
OMFG. If parent isn't flamebait, then I don't know what the fuck is.
My blog
In three words. Yes, he should.
Actually, the US government have huge land grants to railroads, at least the Transcontinental rails
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That's like an ANTI-Stimulus to us software developers trying to make a living.
Only if you let it be anti-stimulus. There are a number of businesses that focus on open source including large ones like IBM. Perhaps, like IBM, a business or software developer can use a mix of open source and closed source proprietary software can be used.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't want any of my tax dollars subsidizing it.
I don't want any or my tax dollars subsidizing any business.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
...come government regulations
there's a big black nigger in the white house
but it ain't like they ain't been in there before
there's a big black nigger in the white house
but i still think that they should stick to mopping floors
Boy, some people are terrified of the free market and capitalism. What I am terrified of is government. Almost every mass atrocity and human rights violations was done by government not capitalism.
I get the feeling there are a lot of people who would rather see any unemployed person starve than give them a penny of government money.
That's right. I'd rather the bum who does nothing to improve their lot in get no taxpayer money. Instead I'll rather use my money to help those who try to help themselves.
Think of it this way: would you rather be forced to pay some guy to make widgets you don't want and only he will profit from, or pay someone to pick up garbage in the park?
No, no, no, think of it this way: would you rather be forced to pay for some bum who will not work, or someone who tries to work? Would you rather pay for someone's medical bills who eats at McDonald's all the tyme, or donate money to someone who through no fault of their own is injured?
"At least the latter contributes to the public good."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The first couple of hits are from freelancer websites and the next ones are from 2006.
Okay then let's limit to the past month, that shows more than 170,000. Eliminating freelance still results in more than 160,000.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
All this talk about "stimulus", deficits, and spending misses the real point. The "stimulus" spending extravaganza always was designed to reward those interest groups who supported Obama with federal tax dollars, and to keep tax dollars away from those that did not.
Look at the winners and losers. The left gets the bucks.
Once you understand why the spending extravaganza was passed, you can understand why we are in the mess we're currently in and why we won't get out of it for a decade, if then.
Reward open source also? Did Open Source openly campaign for Obama?
the big wall street bailout (TARP #1) rewarded all the banks that were failing, too.
Warning, don't spit on your monitor. Banks charge to withdraw unemployment benefits.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Not the dictator. He doesn't just get to give money to whoever he wants. It has to go through the Congress first.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
One buys a house within his means; the other overextends.
The one who buys a house within their means benefits as well when the government steps in to help the one who's going through foreclosure. A foreclosed home on the same street depresses the values of all the homes in the area. The more houses that are foreclosed the lower the value of the rest of the houses.
Now, I'm not saying people who paid too much for a house should get government help, I was against the bailout period, however since there was a bailout the money should have gone to those who were having their houses foreclosed instead of directly to the banks. By helping struggling home owners pay their mortgage the banks would still have been paid keeping the credit market functioning.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There will be no incentives for ... people interested in buying foreclosed properties.
Of course there is : do you how CHEAP you can buy an investment property now ? If you have the money now is definitely a good time.
At least some economists expect it to get worse. I've read where economists expect the housing market to bottom out in the fall of 2009. If true and you wait until then you can buy a house cheaper in the fall.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
wouldn't it be cool if universities had a senior course in OSS? A project based course, you have to either come up with your own project or get into one that is existing, and then the student does "real world" development for a term. Similar to internships with for profit companies, but the students get a chance to experience OSS development, or get credit for stuff they would do anyways.
I've never missed a payment on my mortage, always paid a little extra in fact so that I'd pay it off sooner and pay less overall.
I used to think like this, but in a normal economy it's better to pay exactly what your payment is and invest the rest. The interest on the mortgage for a person's primary residence is tax deductible and the investment returns better rates than what is saved by paying off a mortgage faster than it's term. With the economy like it is now, it's better to save money in case your primary source of income disappears.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
FLOSS does not create jobs or do anything else to stimulate the economy, therefore, no.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm pretty sure Switzerland and Sweden are two different countries. I suppose if they merged somehow we could call them the 'Swish'
Why don't we just subsidize neither? Seriously, why do we have to subsidize OSS or any business?
As is practiced today, eg where farms are subsidized yearly, there should be no subsidies. Subsidies are only supposed to be a temporary measure of help, and I am against them.
It's bizarre. If it's worth subsidizing or bailing out, then let the free market subsidize and bail.
In the vast majority of cases I agree. I opposed the Wall Street and Bank bailouts, and I oppose the stimulus plan today.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I can think of one thing wrong with it. How do you insure that only American software developers benefit from such the stimulus?
I see two problems with this line of reasoning. One is that the US economy depends on international trade, the US economy will not be stable if the rest of the world's economy is not stable too. And secondly, even closed source US proprietary software companies use and pay foreigners. Microsoft not only has offices employing people in China and India but also has supported H1B visas for foreign nationals.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Boosting my rainy day fund by some very fractional amount isn't buying as much psychological bang for the buck as shaving 5 years off my repayment plan, basically.
If you're comfortable and have enough saved for a rainy period, then go for it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Isn't the whole point of open source that you volunteer to contribute work? That's what makes open source great, and actually helps with a quality. Public radio is another good example as it seems to be the only thing worth listening on regular FM radio these days. People might say these are all very fiscally-left organizations, but I would say that these represent some of the ideals of being fiscally-conservative. That is, that volunteer-based things can often thrive and be great based on people making donations.
Your quote:
correlation does not mean causation.
Is actually incorrect, it should more correctly be "correlation does not necessarily mean causation."
Correlation can be a pretty strong indicator of causation. It isn't the whole story, obviously, but on its own, it is evidence. When a scientist has evidence -- he must then prove or disprove the relationship.
When I see statistics, I don't automatically believe what they imply, but more often than not they are an indicator.
Two examples;
(1) If you own a hand gun you are more likely to die of gun violence. It could also be that if you own a hand gun, you live in an environment that is inherently more dangerous. If explored even closer, it may show that in "dangerous urban environments" you are MUCH more likely to die from gun violence UNLESS you own a gun. While still being more likely to die of gun violence, on average, the gun actually helps your chances in some circumstances.
(2) if you smoke tobacco cigarettes you are more likely to get lung cancer. In this case correlation *IS* causation.
The open source movement is exactly what should be funded.
That's a bad idea. Government shouldn't be funding either open source or proprietary software. They should let people keep the money they work to earn and let them decide who they want to support.
I had an argument with a microsoftie a while ago, who was convinced that open source was destroying the software industry. I countered that all it was doing was creating a rich infrastructure on top of which other industry could be built.
Next tyme maybe you can remind him, or her, that open source software has been around longer than Microsoft. Members of the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT were writing open source programs back in the 1950s and '60s.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
After WWII and again after the Vietnam War, veterans were given the options of college loans with low interest rates and long repayment terms. Those individuals not only bettered their own economic standing, but the increased taxes they paid after becoming doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, accountants, engineers, scientists, teachers, computer scientists, and jobs-creating entrepreneurs provided the government and the economy a great return on their investment. The costs of a 4-year undergrad degree and another 3 â" year graduate degree today total about $250,000. Taking these people out of the workforce during time of high unemployment and returning them with higher skills to a recovering economy in seven years is one of the five intelligent things our government could do that makes financial sense in the long term and alleviates some anxiety and misery right now.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Don't worry I won't hold that against you, I'm a "greenie" and I appreciate factual arguments regardless of where I find them. ;)
You can be both. I am a libertarian, small "l", and a greenie, er environmentalist, er someone who wants to take care of ecological systems. Private enterprises can be effective in cleaning up the environment.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The GPL is freedom for users. For developers BSD licenses offer more freedom.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This aspect already prevents many OSS projects from going closed-source because it is nearly impossible to gather together all members of the development community to agree on legal terms
That's one of the problems I have with the GPL. On the other hand the BSD licenses allow developers to close their source code.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You mean things like dykes to protect New Orleans, bridges that aren't falling down, health-care and education that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? - Now is the time to purchase those things and re-employ the tsunami of unemployed auto-workers that are on the near term horizon.
Many people will not like this but perhaps New Orleans should not be rebuilt. In less than 100 years New Orleans has been hit by hurricanes more than 8 tyme. Also the ground around New Orleans and in the bayou is subsiding ie sinking.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
looks like mass. may rise again. Comparison of ISO standards (ODF vs OOXML) is being sought on Groklaw again - see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090220233049762
And, in the extreme situation, where the influx of money makes open source more viable - once the government stops throwing money at it, and open source is more robust, stable, and performant than closed source software - congrats; you've just displaced an entire industry of software developers.
Do you think fairies create open source software? All open source is is a different business model, one that still uses software developers. And because it is available for everyone to look at it can be made more robust, stable, perform better, and simply be better than closed source software. Obscurity doesn't mean it's better.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Invest in PEOPLE and not in ECONOMY.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga