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NY Bill Proposes Tax Credit for Open Source Developers
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Assemblymen Jonathan Bing and Micah Kellner, along with a number of co-sponsors, have introduced proposed legislation in New York State which would grant a tax credit to individuals acting as volunteers who develop open source programs. The idea of the credit is to ensure that volunteer developers, who could not otherwise deduct their expenses because they are not part of a 'business,' should nevertheless be able to receive a tax benefit for their contribution. The credit would be for 20% of the expenses incurred, up to $200. The preamble to the bill notes that the New York State Assembly itself currently uses 'Open Source programs such as Mozilla for email, Firefox for web browsing, and WebCal for electronic calendars,' and that these programs have led to significant cost savings to taxpayers. The preamble also cited a 2006 report authored by John Irons and Carl Malamud from the Center for American Progress detailing how Open Source software enhances a broader dissemination of knowledge and ideas."
New York was heavily dependent on wall street/banker money and expanded government spending during the subprime bubble.. That money dried up big time and they are one of the hardest hit states. There's no chance of any tax credit. In fact, you should hope they don't start taxing FREE software.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The idea sounds excellent in principle, but how do you tell a true open source developer apart from a poser looking to abuse this program?
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If you want to help open source, require that government software makes widespread use of open specifications. The rest will pay for itself.
To the mod... perfectly on topic. Let me break it down slowly for you. We have various agencies offering tax breaks and increased spending to help the economy. The reality is that spending Trillions more than you bring in may help short-term. However, long term we have to work harder just to pay the debt we owe everyone.
Now, if Mr. Smith not receiving any benefit from the overspending, he rightly goes "Hey, it isn't right to put me into debt so you can benefit". But, throw him a bone, and suddenly he is content with the overspending and gladly puts the ring through his nose.
Fast forward a generation, and the bill catches up with us. We spend more time just to pay off old debts, and less for investing in the future. Countries who lent us the money have more to spend on capital projects. Soon we are a 2nd world country.
It is already happening. And seeing the collective orgasm over a $200 credit illustrates it beautifully.
Bottom line: tax cuts are nice. But you have to pay for them. Either now. Or later.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
insightful my ass.
IOW, "You could not have developed this code if the taxpayer did not subsidize it, therefore the taxpayer owns it, not you, and you now have to pay a $50/year tax to use it. Obviously, since you did not own it, you could not copyright it, and the GPL is null and void,
He supports universal healthcare, for example, but can not accept that it's general failure is due to a design and not implementation flaw.
pure bullshit
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
By the way, for those of you anxious to know the background of how an Assemblyman named Jonathan Bing got into this issue, I should mention that
(a) the guy with the idea behind this bill was "open government", "open access to court records", "open source", "open everything" activist Carl Malamud, who was most recently in the news when Congressmen and Senators started picking up his thread about making PACER -- i.e. court records -- free (as in beer); and
(b) the guy who helped usher this through, and put together the details, and get the Assemblymen to put their backs behind this, in the halls of government, is a very dynamic young geek and Slashdotter named Benjamin Kallos (like myself a Bronx High School of Science grad) who until recently was working for Assemblyman Bing but is now running for City Council in Manhattan.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Keep the money out of it. The open source system is already working. Any additional legislation, no matter how well intended, has consequences. If nothing else, government officials have to spend their time administering that legislation. Only when the benefits outweigh the consequences should legislation be introduced.
This kind of legislation only has the potential to harm the open source movement.
Currently, the benefit of this extra legislation is a pittance, a mere $200. This is nothing more than a token gesture. It's intended as an extra incentive for individuals to contribute, but gives no real relief to any project large enough to make a difference.
So it has barely any benefit, and it has a chance to do a lot of harm.
The little harms: It can be abused too easily. There's very little way to keep proper track. The money would be diverted from other public benefit.
The big harms: 1) incentives have been shown to psychologically stifle altruistic endeavours and 2) possible large scale abuse later.
1) The incentive
This kind of incentive actually does a lot more harm than good. Barry Schwartz talks about it briefly in one of his TED talks. (at 10min 50sec).
"If you have a reason for doing something and I give you a second reason, it seems only logical that 2 reasons are better than one and you're more likely to do it. Right? Well, not always..." He gives an example of something I've heard about time and time again. If people are willing to do something based on principle for what they believe is right, they are less likely to do it if they are also offered an incentive of money. The introduction of the incentive switches the psychological focus from, 'How can I help?' to 'What can I get out of it?' Without the incentive we're willing to deal with difficulties for a community or a cause we think is right. With the incentive, we weigh the difficulties with what we're getting out of it.
2) Abuse
If legislation grabs hold in one place, that makes it easier for similar legislation to come about in other places. This can have a snowball effect until it gets rather large. So right now you'd have a few individuals abusing the system, but if more legislation gets passed and more money added, you'd get large corporations abusing the system. What happens when the the next OOXML (a product owned by a large company but passed off as being the same as any other OSS) comes into play? It'll just be another government kickback to be abused. Don't assume government legislation is going to be tech savvy as to what true FOSS is.
OSS is doing fine now. It's not broken. It doesn't need fixing. There is already legislation helping non-profit organizations. This kind of legislation does not provide any real benefit. It is too easy to abuse now and it psychologically harms the motivations of the OSS movement.
Let's leave the money in OSS to donations and deals with ordinary companies. Adding extra governmental layers of money is just a bad idea.