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>We need to have incentives for maintaining this foundational software. It's my opinion that contributing to free software is a public good, and so we should h
by castratikron 11y ago
>We need to have incentives for maintaining this foundational software.
It's my opinion that contributing to free software is a public good, and so we should have state-funded employees whose full-time job is to work on this software. I think something like this is already done in places like France and Europe, but to my knowledge the majority of paid-for American contributions to FLOSS comes from corporations.
- lawpoop 11y agoHow would we decide what specific projects are actually worked on?
- nitrogen 11y agoHow does the NIH decide what research gets funded?
- elcritch 11y ago* Shudders * In recent years the shifts reduction of public funding levels combined with a cultural shift toward emulating business models and proving ROI has, IMHO, stilted creativity, exploration, and the creation of basic fundamental science. An analogous situation would be tons of grant money spent on Rails-like frameworks (because it's 'hot') while fundamental projects like "rewriting a safe glibc" would be deemed lacking in utility.
- drewm1980 11y agoThere is a lot of public funding of FLOSS software through universities. Unfortunately, the funding model doesn't work well for big projects or projects lasting more than a few years. A lot of great stuff is developed using public funds and then abandoned when the developer graduates.