Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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
Agreed. That's the answer to "Will Obama give stimulus to open source?" rather than the question posed by the headline.
As far as whether Obama should or not, I don't personally think it's the job of governments to support open source software financially. The way I see it, OSS is recession-proof. It will get developed whether there is money or not. Most OSS developers are willing to work now to earn rewards later.
My blog
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.
Of course there should be government investment in OSS development, you stupid fucks.
All that ranting! You could have just said "I don't understand the difference between an economic stimulus and an investment". It would have been much shorter.
Nice try, but the vast majority of free-market libertarians I've met are FAR from wealthy. Usually those advocating a more liberal system are the wealthier. Compare the bigger cities vs. the countries; bigger cities such as New York and San Fran are typically very liberal and also relatively wealthy.
The big ideological divide here is that you, a liberal, is that you're viewing people and things by function and utility, whereas the (true) libertarian believes in rights in-and-of-themselves, rights for the sake of rights. Whereas you may believe in freedom of speech because the free exchange of ideas may lead to better ideas, the libertarian believes that people should innately just be able to say what they want to say as an individual right, with little concern over whether it benefits society or not.
The greed of corporations is not ideological, not in any traditional sense of the word. Corporations, composed of usually many shareholders that are far removed from the employees of the company and their standard of living, highlight part of what's inherently wrong with democracy in the first place. And Laissez-faire is not an inherently pro-corporation philosophy--many libertarians oppose "corporate personhood" and also the greed of big business extends into government handouts and favors, which the staunch libertarian strongly rejects in almost all, if not all, circumstances.
You bring up the Iraq war, like the libertarians supported it, and maybe some "libertarians in name only" did, but the true adherents never supported it. The most laissez-faire guy in Congress--Ron Paul, obviously--strongly opposed the war from the get-go, one of the relatively few Republicans who did!
Ironically, too, that you complain about people whine about "socialism" and their big-screen TVs when the libertarians typically stress saving money instead of continual spending. It is the left that believes that people should have that high standard of living, with all its modern comforts, not the "true" right (if you consider the libertarian to be the "true right"). If you think the libertarians weren't complaining about the cost of the war--in lives and in money--you clearly weren't listening. I find that far, far too common in the left, whom choose to misrepresent libertarians quite willingly, or at least ideologically aren't all that interested in the truth.
The libertarian does not necessarily oppose "Universal Healthcare" insofar that is a voluntary decision of the individual. Not because they want to stop UH, but because they simply want to maximize the freedom and choice of every individual, even if that means the individual can end up hurting themself. The libertarian is the true democrat, as the libertarian beliefs in personal action and personal choice as opposed to the sham activities of modern democracies where some group inevitably takes from another group for the former group's benefit, whether it be poor from rich or rich from poor, able from unable or unable from able, smart from stupid or stupid from strong, or so on.
The libertarian is about individual action whereas the modern liberal is about government action. The libertarian often wouldn't mind to see what you want enacted in society, they just want it to be a personal choice--no matter if most people would find it beneficial. The modern attempt to construct a "one-size-fits-all" society is what the libertarian ultimately rejects because the focus on the libertarian is on the rights of the individual and not what most fits for the group.
Until you can understand and properly address the concerns of the libertarian, your arguments won't make much headway with any of them, because you're talking past them and insulting them by implying they believe or dislike things that may not necessarily be the case.
The United States of America is a representative democracy, where the people select representatives that will run the country on their behalf. This is in contrast with a direct democracy, like the Swiss cantons or Greek city states, where the people meet regularly and conduct the business of government through direct voting. It is also a republic, as the President is elected rather than inheriting the title.
This is stuff most people learn in a high-school class room, so I suggest the phrase 'people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' applies to your comment about keeping quiet while the adults talk.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News