Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

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...another point in the favor of legally forcing governments and public institutions to use open-source software and open data formats.

This should be as plain and simple as stating that "if there exists a fully functional open-source technology that satisfies a public institution's need, the institution should be forced to use such technology instead of any proprietary alternative, or to demand it's contractors to develop a custom open-source solution, even if it's more expensive then a proprietary alternative" (with some "sane" limit like it can be "up to but not more than 5x as expensive" - there's befits to society from funding "a bit" of os dev from public funds, but not over do it...).

"Software capitalism" and public infrastructure don't mix well. And private companies can still make tons of money developing, customizing/extending and supporting open-source software for use by gov clients.

But if it's paid from people's taxes, it should only be open-source!

I wouldn't go that far to recommend non custom gov software to be open source (mainly because its far less realistic), but custom should be mandatory. There are very few countries that request that now AFAIK - Romania I think on state level, and many on city/region level.

Yes, use oracle junk instead of postgre if you want, but software MUST BE open source, its only logical given that is financed by the budget and analyzed, tested and influenced by the gov people. Otherwise, you have private companies that get rich on taxpayer money, and not only that, but monopoly, zero reuse between regional local govs, worst quality and security etc.

You wouldn't believe the resistance I have, trying to introduce this in my country.

How do you solve the issue of a tech-illiterate government throwing bundles of cash at the first company that sets the most unrealistic expectation at a cost that still seems 'valid'?

Half the stuff a government has contracted out for mils or bils could have been mostly implemented by small shops charging a few hundred K tops.

Unless you still believe a glorified CMS/ERP takes billions to write.

It can be solved. Gov tech people could be excluded from the laws dictating gov salaries. They must have concurrent salary.

Given that, most would stay in gov I think - the domain is fantastic for serious engineers - entire country of clients, usually all domestic companies or people must be involved, most services should work 24/7, have zero downtime etc. Its as hard as it can get without being at Google and Facebook IMO.

There are other ideas to solve this problem too, but let me not digress here.

I agree.. the issue tends to come down to...

CITY: Hey, we paid for this, but these other cities using it aren't funding (chipping in) for further development...

Microsoft knows how to play that game. They will just lobby the government to specify that they require some feature that only Microsoft happens to offer.

...even by forcing them to play, it's still a win because there is some cost in playing the game.

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