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I try (tried?) to push for greater FOSS adoption by governments (www.oss4gov.org) and it's still a long way off good. One of the biggest hurdles was always "su

I try (tried?) to push for greater FOSS adoption by governments (www.oss4gov.org) and it's still a long way off good. One of the biggest hurdles was always "support". Purchasers liked OSS but no one felt they would get commercial levels of support (a single wringable neck if you like). I think that the best solution to this is to commercialise FOsS support - I think that dev shops can select decent FOSS projects and provide various guaranteed support - in a common manner. Perhaps some kind of licenced or insurance payment. I can imagine some kind of back payment to the original project - it won't be as profitable as software use license but it might be enough?

nine_k 5y ago
Was / is it not the core business of Red Hat? You can run Linux for free, but if you want continued support, you can pay for it. I wonder if something like that is available for front-office software, like Libre Office, Odoo, Redmine, etc. I suppose much of the FOSS support business model has been eaten by cloud,providers who offer a lot of such software as a service. I still suspect that many government agencies would prefer or require on-premises installations.
- pabs3 5y ago
  Various companies do LibreOffice support: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/ https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/ Probably there are companies for the other projects you name, or contracting random developers would work.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I should have been clearer - in my head I meant software that is specific to government - so I want to see FOSS versions of building licensing applications, or road maintenance gazetteers, or databases of voters, or fleet management applications for refuse collectionnlorries or ... There is a world of software (usually 50% of GDP) that only gets spent by government - it should be free (libre) and it needs creating, distributing and supporting
pabs3 5y ago
A lot of FLOSS projects have commercial support, and the good ones even have an ecosystem of multiple companies who provide paid support and also contribute back to the project, for eg: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#freelancing https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#freelanc... That can go wrong when the support companies are doing most of the work but not getting much out of it, for example Collabora's forking of LibreOffice Online. https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/692871/ https://lwn.net/Articles/692871/
rrdharan 5y ago
That’s exactly what TideLift is trying. https://www.tidelift.com https://www.tidelift.com

nine_k 5y ago

Was / is it not the core business of Red Hat? You can run Linux for free, but if you want continued support, you can pay for it. I wonder if something like that is available for front-office software, like Libre Office, Odoo, Redmine, etc. I suppose much of the FOSS support business model has been eaten by cloud,providers who offer a lot of such software as a service. I still suspect that many government agencies would prefer or require on-premises installations.

pabs3 5y ago
Various companies do LibreOffice support: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/ https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/ Probably there are companies for the other projects you name, or contracting random developers would work.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I should have been clearer - in my head I meant software that is specific to government - so I want to see FOSS versions of building licensing applications, or road maintenance gazetteers, or databases of voters, or fleet management applications for refuse collectionnlorries or ... There is a world of software (usually 50% of GDP) that only gets spent by government - it should be free (libre) and it needs creating, distributing and supporting

pabs3 5y ago

A lot of FLOSS projects have commercial support, and the good ones even have an ecosystem of multiple companies who provide paid support and also contribute back to the project, for eg: https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#freelancing https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#freelanc... That can go wrong when the support companies are doing most of the work but not getting much out of it, for example Collabora's forking of LibreOffice Online. https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/833233/ https://lwn.net/Articles/692871/ https://lwn.net/Articles/692871/

rrdharan 5y ago

That’s exactly what TideLift is trying. https://www.tidelift.com https://www.tidelift.com