Should Obama Give Stimulus To Open Source? 525
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."
Qualified no. (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably not. The best things to do are twofold. Firstly, ensure a level playing field by mandating open and free formats, protocols and standards for all government operations. That's what Open Source really needs to compete and it's a good thing from the point of view of openness of information, maintenance and future-proofing anyway. The second thing that the government should probably do is to bloody well start doing things in-house again. None of this outsourcing to massive corporations that spend 90% of the money on managerial salaries and bonuses and
Sounds good (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a great idea... If nothing else, it might help induce certain monopolies to become more competitive and re-focus on creating better software, rather than spending its resources trying to crush its opponents.
And, as much as I would resist the government getting involved in standards-making and enforcement, it wouldn't be out of line for them to exert themselves toward making sure certain monopolies don't subvert the existing independent standards-making bodies through bribery and infiltration.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
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".
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Interesting)
At this point, I can't imagine why those companies wouldn't want to go into bankruptcy at this point.
It would allow them to finally shake off all the stupid union contracts that have been smothering them for decades, and rendering them unable to really compete with the world market.
Re:oh god no (Score:2, Interesting)
I make my living largely using open sources software to build stuff for a company. Without the open source software, I'd have to learn some proprietary piece of crap and watch my job devolve into pointing and clicking and 'no we can't do that because the tool doesn't do it'. With open source, I can say absolutely yes we can do that, and then figure out how to do that afterwards in full confidence that even if the tool doesn't exist, I can create it or improve the existing tool to get the job done. That's just not something you can do with closed source.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
like everybody else,
I live in the UK, and whenever I've thought about emigrating, it's been to somewhere like Canada, Holland, Sweeden or New Zealand. Never thought about moving to the USA. The reason? Your government taxes and spends just as much money as all the others but in the countries I mentioned some of it gets back to the population in the form of things like socialised health care and good infrastructure. In the USA the money seems to all go to the military and to corporations.
Re:oh god no (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Possibly...by sponsoring projects (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the govt. should sponsor selected Open Source projects. One to calculate income tax would be quite reasonable.
Any form that the govt. requires should be a reasonable project to be sponsored. And any application that the govt. needs for it's own internal use.
I'm against govt. money just being grants. That feels like a bad idea. But hiring people to build carefully selected Open Source projects should be a good thing. Probably the BSD or MIT license should be chosen, as companies should be able to take the developed source code and run with it.
Re:oh god no (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a joke? Why did somebody mod it up? Would anybody care to guess how much the US govt., at all levels and departments, has paid for MS Word alone over the decades? I'd be shocked if the US taxpayer is not Microsoft's single biggest customer.