3 ms·

This should be the norm for software developed as work for hire for all kinds of governments, everywhere, if only for the reason that it would save a lot of red

by Zigurd 5y ago

This should be the norm for software developed as work for hire for all kinds of governments, everywhere, if only for the reason that it would save a lot of redundant development of software used by governments. There are obvious exceptions for weapons technology. But the presumption should be that governments must look to existing open source software before they contract for software development, and they should contribute newly developed software to the pool.

sofixa 5y ago
Absolutely agreed. Public money, public code. So much software can be shared between various governments it's not even funny how much money was wasted on useless huge vendors like Accenture and IBM.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  > Public money, public code. That's the slogan of https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu
- lmeyerov 5y ago
  I like the sentiment, but have struggled on mechanism. Basically, we need to incentivize creating & running good OSS projects: the more direct the incentives, the harder for non-maintainers to game the system. I suspect the current proposal tilts the bias even further to consulting companies who explicitly rather compete on butts in seats writing code vs OSS product teams wanting to build quality code that minimizes servicing needs. On any individual contract, the product team would be more expensive and thus less competitive, and no longer have a proprietary advantage built up over time to defend against that: the services team can hack the same code. My observation is 100% as a product person who sees these bids go out and contractors take either most or all of a contract because of this dilemma. If we open sourced even more, we'd get even less interest, despite writing measurably better code. Instead, I've been thinking something like "X% budget / yr should be grants to SMB OSS project maintainers" based on a few flavors (gov use, commercial use, ...). Incentivize creating popularly used OSS, vs more services. Like take the SBIR budget and make a 20% match to SMB OSS. Maybe a DAO that'd actually help :)
- zoobab 5y ago
  5M EUR wasted on an open source editor for writing legislation: https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/open-source-software-editing-legislation_en https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/open-source-software-editi... Git and Markdown would do a better job, XML is insane.
  - samsonradu 5y ago
    XML is not insane, actually it’s an open standard for writing legal documents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akoma_Ntoso https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akoma_Ntoso Legal text is not prose, it does have structure and metadata attached to it.
mdp2021 5y ago
The workflow is not trivial though: (assuming the relevant systems are critical) you must also have a number of security experts monitoring the code full time, delaying the in-production stage accordingly... Interestingly, the fault tolerance is increased, as less care from some project beneficiaries will be compensated by the extra care of others (instead of the former being just liabilities).

by Zigurd 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

Absolutely agreed. Public money, public code. So much software can be shared between various governments it's not even funny how much money was wasted on useless huge vendors like Accenture and IBM.

MayeulC 5y ago
> Public money, public code. That's the slogan of https://publiccode.eu https://publiccode.eu
lmeyerov 5y ago
I like the sentiment, but have struggled on mechanism. Basically, we need to incentivize creating & running good OSS projects: the more direct the incentives, the harder for non-maintainers to game the system. I suspect the current proposal tilts the bias even further to consulting companies who explicitly rather compete on butts in seats writing code vs OSS product teams wanting to build quality code that minimizes servicing needs. On any individual contract, the product team would be more expensive and thus less competitive, and no longer have a proprietary advantage built up over time to defend against that: the services team can hack the same code. My observation is 100% as a product person who sees these bids go out and contractors take either most or all of a contract because of this dilemma. If we open sourced even more, we'd get even less interest, despite writing measurably better code. Instead, I've been thinking something like "X% budget / yr should be grants to SMB OSS project maintainers" based on a few flavors (gov use, commercial use, ...). Incentivize creating popularly used OSS, vs more services. Like take the SBIR budget and make a 20% match to SMB OSS. Maybe a DAO that'd actually help :)
zoobab 5y ago
5M EUR wasted on an open source editor for writing legislation: https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/open-source-software-editing-legislation_en https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/open-source-software-editi... Git and Markdown would do a better job, XML is insane.
- samsonradu 5y ago
  XML is not insane, actually it’s an open standard for writing legal documents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akoma_Ntoso https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akoma_Ntoso Legal text is not prose, it does have structure and metadata attached to it.

mdp2021 5y ago

The workflow is not trivial though: (assuming the relevant systems are critical) you must also have a number of security experts monitoring the code full time, delaying the in-production stage accordingly... Interestingly, the fault tolerance is increased, as less care from some project beneficiaries will be compensated by the extra care of others (instead of the former being just liabilities).