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."

Comments

Re:Not Until I Get My Free House and Car

[larry bagina]

Last year, people were able to buy $500k+ houses with no proof of income. Banananomics says the bank should drop your rate and the government will subsidize it to 31% of your income if you're behind on your mortgage. And if you had no job to begin with (or were laid off)... sounds like a free house to me.

They're still working on the free car part, but GMAC received TARP money (twice) and promptly dropped interest rates to 0 and lowered the standards needed to qualify for a car loan.

Re:No.

[lwsimon]

Undemocratic, eh?

We're not a democracy. We are a republic, or at least the documents say so.

Please try to stay quiet when the adults are talking, k?

Re:oh god no

[thesandtiger]

There are a couple of things wrong with your post:

The stimulus (and, it seems, many of the Obama administration's policies) are designed to reward failure.

That's not remotely true. They're designed to forestall worse economic situations that would sink the entire economy. Now, they may not actually do that, but that's what they're *designed* to do. I don't think anyone who was involved said, "Let's make a plan that rewards people for failing and punishes people who succeed!" To phrase it the way you did implies that they're actively out to hurt the country, and that's just hackery. You may disagree with how they are going about trying to solve a problem, but if you begin with the idea that they are doing so out of bad intentions, then you're not really being all that helpful.

There will be no incentives for people that are on time

How about the incentive of not having to ask for a hand-out? How about the incentive of not having to worry that you're going to lose your home because you make your payments on time? How about the incentive of not having to deal with the whole bureaucratic mess that will inevitably spring up from the need to screen people who are asking for help?

Do you also have a problem in that you don't get anything from unemployment insurance because you're not unemployed? Do you complain that there are handicapped spaces that you're not allowed to take advantage of? Do you wish your children were mentally retarded or otherwise disabled so that they could take advantage of special needs programs? How often do you lament not being given food stamps because you can afford to eat?

I'm a homeowner. I've got a job. I put down 20% when I bought the place, got a mortgage with an excellent fixed rate. 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. The place I bought has "only" lost 10% of its value during the current crash (and is still worth quite a bit more than I paid for it). So, in other words, I don't expect to get anything directly from the stimulus package, nor do I need it.

But, the indirect benefit I hope to get is that, if more people can keep their homes rather than being foreclosed on, the housing market will hopefully not completely bottom out to where my place will be worth less than I paid for it and to where if I do want to sell it I won't be able to do so without taking a large loss. Further, the economy not going completely into the toilet (read: to the point where the joke about stockpiling food, guns and ammo isn't a joke anymore) and that's a good thing for people like me who don't want to live in some kind of post-apocalyptic world where people kill one another over toilet paper and boxes of Froot Loops.