4 ms·

I think that's a rather negative outlook. Is the fund applicable to financing ongoing triage for projects? Nope. Is €30k worth of funding for 40 kicking off i

I think that's a rather negative outlook. Is the fund applicable to financing ongoing triage for projects? Nope. Is €30k worth of funding for 40 kicking off individual projects valuable and worthwhile? Hell, yes. Might the scope of an endeavor like this evolve in coming years, as they demonstrate success? Sure. Government backed funding for OSS projects is a really smart and efficient use of public money when it comes to investing in digital infrastructure. It doesn't need to be perfect on launch, and it's far easier to pitch and justify the value of seed money like this, than it is to make (just as valuable, but more subtle) wider case for ongoing funding. Furthermore I'm sure there's plenty of projects that could pitch proposals for new features that they want to build, while building in the cost of ongoing triage during those 6 months. (Ie. Make sure that the amount of work your proposing is viable on the assumption that you'll also have ongoing triage work to keep on top of at the same time.) Let's celebrate the OSS funding achievements as they come, rather than knocking them.

Mithaldu 10y ago
> I think that's a rather negative outlook. I guess my post was partly influenced by this piece of information being rather hidden on their website, instead of up-front and center. Spending a million can be justified if they manage to drag at least one useful thing out of the pile. Then again, i'd rather see something like "Ok, you made this thing and you're fairly sure it's viable, let us help you make it shine". I've seen too many things fail where the tech and thinking behind it was solid and working fine, but a severe lack of round tuits strangled the project before it could blossom.
- tomchristie 10y ago
  Sure. I think a slightly wider remit would be perfectly reasonable too. It's just that kind of funding is a little more complicated to justify, as the outcomes are less well-defined. I'm sure there'll be existing projects will be able to roll with the terms, and use the money in a way that both builds new functionality, while also refining the existing project.
- gajomi 10y ago
  >Then again, i'd rather see something like "Ok, you made this thing and you're fairly sure it's viable, let us help you make it shine". I found this comment interesting, in that I imagine with the right PR campaign this could be easy to sell, and seems to me to be in line with extant German culture surrounding engineering rigor.
VLM 10y ago
Let me propose an alternative way of looking at it, that 30KE for six months of possible part time funding of new projects is almost perfectly wrong financially. Early in a project you want experienced people putting in lots of time (full time) on architecture and initial design and MVP. Later on, lower paid programmers can evolve the project part time to add javascript flavor of the month. As an alternative financial model, how about 25KE (or more) for two months for expert level programmers to bootstrap a new project full time only, or 60KE for a year to evolve features and squash bugs on an existing project perhaps part time. Or if politics and PR make ongoing support impossible, then only do the bootstrap phase. Its possible programmer salaries in .de are much lower than I think they are. However they can't too much lower, someone there is buying all those BMWs and VWs.
- tomchristie 10y ago
  I think it fits well if you expect most projects to be a single engineer working full-time. An equivalent of up to €60k/yr full-time is a pretty good salary by most folks standards, even if it's not quite up there with top-tier engineering levels. (I'd probably suggest the funding was getting poor value-for-money if it was)
- bjourne 10y ago
  It's the opposite. Any decent programmer can make a nicely architectured MVP. It is maintaining the code, refactoring it and implementing new feature requests not envisioned by the original programmers that takes real skill. Stupid analogy time: Building a shiny, new house; easy. Retrofitting a 300 year old house with 1000gb ethernet wiring everywhere, while keeping the original character of the house and with minimal disruption to its inhabitants; HARD.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Simply not true when the design is not trivial. I'm giving interviews with system design, I'd say that the majority of programmers who are decent cannot actually architecture anything well enough. And it doesn't matter if they're given more time, they don't have the training/experience for it. (They'll only learn the impact of their decisions later, eventually painfully). On the other hand, they may be able to develop it if handed and led through a proper architecture.
davidw 10y ago
> Government backed funding for OSS projects is a really smart and efficient use of public money when it comes to investing in digital infrastructure. I think that remains to be demonstrated. I can think of several problems: * Maintenance, as mentioned above. * Government's ability to 'pick winners'. How do you decide who gets the money? * Free rider problem of public goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Free_rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Free_rider_problem It's an interesting experiment, though.
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  I don't see how the free rider problem of public goods appliesin this case. My understanding is the free rider problem would be Linus Torvald quitting linux(because a family member needs experimental medical treatment) to work in HFT for a big pay bump. Even though he creates $10 million of value with Linux he only captures 200k of that, but in HFT he would generate far less value and capture more. This reduction in economic output due to Linus being unable to capture the value he creates because of Linux "free riders" is the free rider problem. Public funding of public goods is a fix to the free rider problem in economics because it means the value creators no longer need to capture the value they generate.(or as much anyway)
  - davidw 10y ago
    If I were a German politician, I might question the use of German funds to sponsor projects that end up being used by startups in the US as infrastructure. For example. It might not play out that way, but I don't see it as impossible either.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > If I were a German politician, I might question the use of German funds to sponsor projects that end up being used by startups in the US as infrastructure. Only if you're bad at math. The thing about funding public research generally is that the ROI is extremely high. When something good is free to use then it will be widely used and produce widespread benefits. Which means that if you spend €30K with the result that local people capture a benefit of €200K and startups in the US capture a benefit of $800K, not funding it is cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're getting back more than you put in regardless of what anybody else is getting. And the US has the same calculus regardless of what you do. If everyone makes the rational choice then it balances out because everyone is funding research and everyone is benefiting from it (and people rationally fund it in proportion to the benefit they get). The only reason everyone doesn't is because the benefits are diffusely distributed so public research doesn't have a strong lobby. But you still come out ahead by doing the right thing here regardless of what anybody else does.

Mithaldu 10y ago

> I think that's a rather negative outlook. I guess my post was partly influenced by this piece of information being rather hidden on their website, instead of up-front and center. Spending a million can be justified if they manage to drag at least one useful thing out of the pile. Then again, i'd rather see something like "Ok, you made this thing and you're fairly sure it's viable, let us help you make it shine". I've seen too many things fail where the tech and thinking behind it was solid and working fine, but a severe lack of round tuits strangled the project before it could blossom.

tomchristie 10y ago
Sure. I think a slightly wider remit would be perfectly reasonable too. It's just that kind of funding is a little more complicated to justify, as the outcomes are less well-defined. I'm sure there'll be existing projects will be able to roll with the terms, and use the money in a way that both builds new functionality, while also refining the existing project.
gajomi 10y ago
>Then again, i'd rather see something like "Ok, you made this thing and you're fairly sure it's viable, let us help you make it shine". I found this comment interesting, in that I imagine with the right PR campaign this could be easy to sell, and seems to me to be in line with extant German culture surrounding engineering rigor.

VLM 10y ago

Let me propose an alternative way of looking at it, that 30KE for six months of possible part time funding of new projects is almost perfectly wrong financially. Early in a project you want experienced people putting in lots of time (full time) on architecture and initial design and MVP. Later on, lower paid programmers can evolve the project part time to add javascript flavor of the month. As an alternative financial model, how about 25KE (or more) for two months for expert level programmers to bootstrap a new project full time only, or 60KE for a year to evolve features and squash bugs on an existing project perhaps part time. Or if politics and PR make ongoing support impossible, then only do the bootstrap phase. Its possible programmer salaries in .de are much lower than I think they are. However they can't too much lower, someone there is buying all those BMWs and VWs.

tomchristie 10y ago
I think it fits well if you expect most projects to be a single engineer working full-time. An equivalent of up to €60k/yr full-time is a pretty good salary by most folks standards, even if it's not quite up there with top-tier engineering levels. (I'd probably suggest the funding was getting poor value-for-money if it was)
bjourne 10y ago
It's the opposite. Any decent programmer can make a nicely architectured MVP. It is maintaining the code, refactoring it and implementing new feature requests not envisioned by the original programmers that takes real skill. Stupid analogy time: Building a shiny, new house; easy. Retrofitting a 300 year old house with 1000gb ethernet wiring everywhere, while keeping the original character of the house and with minimal disruption to its inhabitants; HARD.
- user5994461 10y ago
  Simply not true when the design is not trivial. I'm giving interviews with system design, I'd say that the majority of programmers who are decent cannot actually architecture anything well enough. And it doesn't matter if they're given more time, they don't have the training/experience for it. (They'll only learn the impact of their decisions later, eventually painfully). On the other hand, they may be able to develop it if handed and led through a proper architecture.

davidw 10y ago

> Government backed funding for OSS projects is a really smart and efficient use of public money when it comes to investing in digital infrastructure. I think that remains to be demonstrated. I can think of several problems: * Maintenance, as mentioned above. * Government's ability to 'pick winners'. How do you decide who gets the money? * Free rider problem of public goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Free_rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good#Free_rider_problem It's an interesting experiment, though.

JamesBarney 10y ago
I don't see how the free rider problem of public goods appliesin this case. My understanding is the free rider problem would be Linus Torvald quitting linux(because a family member needs experimental medical treatment) to work in HFT for a big pay bump. Even though he creates $10 million of value with Linux he only captures 200k of that, but in HFT he would generate far less value and capture more. This reduction in economic output due to Linus being unable to capture the value he creates because of Linux "free riders" is the free rider problem. Public funding of public goods is a fix to the free rider problem in economics because it means the value creators no longer need to capture the value they generate.(or as much anyway)
- davidw 10y ago
  If I were a German politician, I might question the use of German funds to sponsor projects that end up being used by startups in the US as infrastructure. For example. It might not play out that way, but I don't see it as impossible either.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > If I were a German politician, I might question the use of German funds to sponsor projects that end up being used by startups in the US as infrastructure. Only if you're bad at math. The thing about funding public research generally is that the ROI is extremely high. When something good is free to use then it will be widely used and produce widespread benefits. Which means that if you spend €30K with the result that local people capture a benefit of €200K and startups in the US capture a benefit of $800K, not funding it is cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're getting back more than you put in regardless of what anybody else is getting. And the US has the same calculus regardless of what you do. If everyone makes the rational choice then it balances out because everyone is funding research and everyone is benefiting from it (and people rationally fund it in proportion to the benefit they get). The only reason everyone doesn't is because the benefits are diffusely distributed so public research doesn't have a strong lobby. But you still come out ahead by doing the right thing here regardless of what anybody else does.