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Yes, it can. We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. It's not like

by mburns 6y ago

Yes, it can. We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did. >Add to that the fact that funding will be uneven, because if the tool achieves a 'good enough' status, why keep funding it If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point. That is a good thing. The federal government isn't the only potential source of government funding. >In fact, this is guaranteed to not be the case, because who is to say that funding a word processor is a productive application of capital when you're not responding to market forces. I don't follow. Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades, which is a response to market forces.

macspoofing 6y ago
>We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. Not in commercial space. Government is good for funding cutting edge research with no obvious commercial benefit. That's a good role for government. Government is atrocious at competing with commercial offerings. >It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did. Right now there is no way for private industry to do better than NASA because there is no clear commercial benefit and the money to develop potential commercial benefits are completely prohibitive. The missions that NASA engages in, from rovers on Mars, to New Horizons probe, to James Webb telescope are very important, and could not be done by private industry (though private industry is sub-contracted for many parts of those projects). That's a proper role for Government - identify gaps that the market has left but that have societal importance and fill then with funding from taxpayers. >If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point. Word processing has been 'good enough' since 1995 - why isn't everyone using Office 95, or LibreOffice. But you do demonstrate why government software projects fail - there is never and 'endpoint' (or 'good enough' point) to software. You're always updating based on market needs. >Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades I reject the assumption, it won't be cheaper to move off of Office. It won't be cheaper to build an alternative. Again, why isn't LibreOffice everywhere? The product is free. Why are companies paying for Office? Are they stupid? Maybe because there are hidden costs, from maintenance, deployment, collaboration with other sites, training, etc. that make using LibreOffice actually more expensive in practice than Office. And by the way, for many companies, Google Suite has supplanted Office (which is typically a paid product). But again, somehow the fact that LibreOffice free, didn't translate to being competitive with that offering.

by mburns 6y ago

macspoofing 6y ago

>We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. Not in commercial space. Government is good for funding cutting edge research with no obvious commercial benefit. That's a good role for government. Government is atrocious at competing with commercial offerings. >It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did. Right now there is no way for private industry to do better than NASA because there is no clear commercial benefit and the money to develop potential commercial benefits are completely prohibitive. The missions that NASA engages in, from rovers on Mars, to New Horizons probe, to James Webb telescope are very important, and could not be done by private industry (though private industry is sub-contracted for many parts of those projects). That's a proper role for Government - identify gaps that the market has left but that have societal importance and fill then with funding from taxpayers. >If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point. Word processing has been 'good enough' since 1995 - why isn't everyone using Office 95, or LibreOffice. But you do demonstrate why government software projects fail - there is never and 'endpoint' (or 'good enough' point) to software. You're always updating based on market needs. >Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades I reject the assumption, it won't be cheaper to move off of Office. It won't be cheaper to build an alternative. Again, why isn't LibreOffice everywhere? The product is free. Why are companies paying for Office? Are they stupid? Maybe because there are hidden costs, from maintenance, deployment, collaboration with other sites, training, etc. that make using LibreOffice actually more expensive in practice than Office. And by the way, for many companies, Google Suite has supplanted Office (which is typically a paid product). But again, somehow the fact that LibreOffice free, didn't translate to being competitive with that offering.