3 ms·

In addition to open sourcing their own software, I hope governments and the EU will pay developers and maintainers of open source software they use.

amelius 6y ago
They should. I think that if there are grants for scientific research, there should also be grants for open source projects. Right now there is a complete framework for research grants (national organizations and the European Research Council), but afaict no such thing exists for open source projects. I think this should change. Also, there should be structural government support for security hardening/audits.
- erk__ 6y ago
  They have been giving out grants for Checking security of open source software. I think that in the past projects such as Rust and curl have gotten grants to make a review of the code.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Certainly, but how large was the budget? Then compare it to the 10-100 billion euros spent annually on scientific research [1]. I'm not saying that the budgets should be equal, but there should be some proportionality. I also think it should be easier for universities to have scientific programmers (who would write open source software) on their payroll. It's especially important for Europe as more research on open protocols means that the internet can become less dependent on large US corporations. And for this type of research you'd need developers. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01566-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01566-z
- Retric 6y ago
  Traditional grants are a poor fit for OSS development. The application process adds a lot of overhead and results in payouts for those that optimize the process rather than write good software. The best implementation I can see is for government institutions to vote on the most useful OSS software with awards for the winners.
happy_tentacles 6y ago
Based my first hand account - there are very timid attempts to open source some libraries - mostly used in between the EU institutions. Code given as a zip, no access to a repo. There is plenty of anxieties around the subject still, so work does not take place in the open. Supporting Open Source projects that are used internally are still deep in the woods, ironically thought one could find reference in documentation to “helping out the community” as a stated benefit of using Open Source...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  How can we help these efforts? How can we make gov more willing and comfortable with publishing to repos and working in public?

amelius 6y ago

They should. I think that if there are grants for scientific research, there should also be grants for open source projects. Right now there is a complete framework for research grants (national organizations and the European Research Council), but afaict no such thing exists for open source projects. I think this should change. Also, there should be structural government support for security hardening/audits.

erk__ 6y ago
They have been giving out grants for Checking security of open source software. I think that in the past projects such as Rust and curl have gotten grants to make a review of the code.
- amelius 6y ago
  Certainly, but how large was the budget? Then compare it to the 10-100 billion euros spent annually on scientific research [1]. I'm not saying that the budgets should be equal, but there should be some proportionality. I also think it should be easier for universities to have scientific programmers (who would write open source software) on their payroll. It's especially important for Europe as more research on open protocols means that the internet can become less dependent on large US corporations. And for this type of research you'd need developers. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01566-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01566-z
Retric 6y ago
Traditional grants are a poor fit for OSS development. The application process adds a lot of overhead and results in payouts for those that optimize the process rather than write good software. The best implementation I can see is for government institutions to vote on the most useful OSS software with awards for the winners.

happy_tentacles 6y ago

Based my first hand account - there are very timid attempts to open source some libraries - mostly used in between the EU institutions. Code given as a zip, no access to a repo. There is plenty of anxieties around the subject still, so work does not take place in the open. Supporting Open Source projects that are used internally are still deep in the woods, ironically thought one could find reference in documentation to “helping out the community” as a stated benefit of using Open Source...

toomuchtodo 6y ago
How can we help these efforts? How can we make gov more willing and comfortable with publishing to repos and working in public?