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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."
get a job hippy.
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?)
Sounds like the best argument I've heard for letting GM and Chrysler fail. Hardly seems fair to Ford, Honda, VW, etc that their competitors are being rewarded for failure.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
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.
That's like an ANTI-Stimulus to us software developers trying to make a living.
Get used to it. The stimulus (and, it seems, many of the Obama administration's policies) are designed to reward failure. Not that he started that trend - the big wall street bailout (TARP #1) rewarded all the banks that were failing, too.
Just as an example, the stimulus provides tax breaks to workers that amounts to about $8 a week, while providing $25 a week more for unemployment compensation payments. The failing auto industry got billions as soon as the Dems took over, and they're now at the door asking for more.
Obama's mortgage assistance program will reward people that are significantly behind in their mortgage payments. There will be no incentives for people that are on time, or for people interested in buying foreclosed properties. It's good to reduce the number of foreclosures happening, but it doesn't do anything to help move families into those foreclosed houses that are now sitting empty.
Maybe you should look into health care information systems, I hear there will be a lot of jobs there, soon. You may have to learn to program with something other than Visual Studio, though, because I imagine the new Health Information Network will use a lot of open source software.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Could you please show me the job offers to work on open source? I'll give you a day to find something and then check back on my post.
Here, now, let me Google that for you.