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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."
and how about....
3: if your idea is so damn good, risk your own damn money.
Every single one of the VC driven tech booms have crashed hard because 75% of the crap is raging garbage.
Got a good idea? Then sell your home and your cars to finance it, then when it's operational look to get more investors and generate capitol the normal way. Every single VC startup I have been a part of or seen close up are nothing more than a "buddy's clubhouse" where they waste money on stupid crap and dont really use their windfall of money for the real task at hand. If you have a personal investment into the company then you will work hard to make it succeed.
If you got your beer idea on a napkin that you convinced some moron to give you $800,000 to start doing, you're gonna screw off and try to play "rich guy" until the money runs out.
The LAST thing we need is to start handing out lottery money to people with "ideas".
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
By "being forced to pay for closed source development" he means "being forced to pay for closed source development with your tax money", not simply buying the software in a shop.
You're not going to get that closed software for free even if your tax money pays for it. So example situation:
Open source: $5 of your tax money goes to say, Firefox
Closed source: $5 of your tax money goes to say, Matlab
The result is the same so far, except that Firefox is already available for free, so the total money spent is still $5, while you still have to buy Matlab even if your tax money contributed to it, so the total cost is $5 + $cost_of_matlab. If you don't buy it, that tax money of yours still gets spent on it.