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Why do governments feel compelled to constantly intervene in businesses? What market failure (apparently unique to Germany) are they fixing? Edit: I have lik

Why do governments feel compelled to constantly intervene in businesses? What market failure (apparently unique to Germany) are they fixing? Edit: I have like 4 different responses. 1) Open source is a human right, 2) security is a mess, 3) China has proven an invasive industrial policy can be successful, and 4) Government intervention is important to prevent wealth imbalances So my conclusion given the lack of consensus is that this fund is totally pointless.

mahmoudhossam 5y ago
Maybe not unique to Germany, but the market failing to properly fund and support OSS software projects?
- j-pb 5y ago
  The mess we're in, in terms of software security and reliability, when it comes to the infrastructure that runs our world is a textbook case-study on how a free market with profit incentives is neither an efficient nor effective driver of an economic system. The drive for unsustainably externalised costs in both resource and labour exploitation, colloquially known as "pay peanuts, get monkeys", creates brittle systems with short term returns. The whole idea of infinite returns in the limit due to steady return from a one time investment is just a different spin on a perpetuum mobile. Entropy incurs a regular cost, be it supply chains, tools, workers, or software.
  - hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
    That's not really fair, software security is better than ever.
  - newlisp 5y ago
    Hey, came across a comment of yours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499058 in search engine results while researching the reasons to why learn Clojure as my next programming language. I'm curious if you have change your mind about it or still prefer JS for new projects? One thing that I find attractive about Clojure is Datomic (databases being a source of complexity in applications), its features like immutability(the db as a value, history), data structures as query language not strings, transactions and data model, OTOH, it's a scary niche black box. Also, the clojure REPL is a nice addition. I'm no stranger to lisps, having played with scheme and racket, know macros, watched some Hickey videos and overall understand clojure's philosophy and concepts but haven't never use it for a real world business application. I'm sure nodejs/postgres could suit my needs perfectly but the ergonomics/defaults of clojure/datomic makes me think things would be less tedious to develop.
Bromeo 5y ago
The statement here is that some "basic digital infrastructure" like compilers or security protocols are fundamental to every individuals participation in the "digital revolution". Therefore the government wants to fund some of this basic infrastructure in order to prevent it from going closed-source or proprietary. The point is that open-source software is not and should not be regulated by the market, as it should not be profit driven.
- cappr 5y ago
  But it should be regulated by a committee of people with no excellent open source histories?
  - Bromeo 5y ago
    Establishing a fund is not the same as regulating the beneficiary. Compare for example with academia - universities in Europe are overwhelmingly government funded, yet they get a lot of freedom in what research they conduct.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
    How do you know the evaluators won't have any open source history? Usually people who evaluate this proposals will have domain knowledge.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    What constitutes an "excellent open source history"? People that code often don't want to be bothered by organization and financial matters, and vice-versa, community work is still often disregarded as not truly open source work. Some people did sit down, did all the leg-work of getting funding for a study, did a study, published it (open source under CC-BY) - including a plan for the setup of the fund, cost analysis, how many people to employ and their pay (btw: roughly 10% of the budget, which seems reasonable at first glance), legal analysis of three funding models (1) and then someone with a random new internet account complains about their open source history (2) and their gender (3) (1) the government can't just go throw money at people without rules. (2) they at least have a published 50 page study (3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29683265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29683265
odiroot 5y ago
Being generally conservative (and especially in business) would be the main reason. Cannot go wrong with the government after all, right? Second reason may be strong lobbying from legacy IT concerns. They usually get government contracts and are usually viable for support from such funds.
hnhg 5y ago
It's not unique to Germany. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
JaimeThompson 5y ago
If only the government had not intervened, via ARPA, to push packed switched networking and had allowed AT&T to keep doing what they did just imagine what the Internet would be today!
mrtksn 5y ago
You can expect this to happen more and more as China demonstrated that innovation is indeed possible by government intervention. Another thing that was demonstrated at exactly same time was that it is possible to have decade long stagnation in an open market. I'm talking about the state of the Web and mobile has come to in the hands of FB, Google and others in the free market with no government interventions. The biggest sensation since many years is (China government supported) TikTok and the "free market" response to it was to try to ban it or force purchase it. My hope is, that countries like USA and UK will re-think their understanding of fairness in a free market and once again we will have fair and innovative free business environment but at this time and stage there's evidence that governmental intervention can yield innovation in stagnated markets. In this exact case, people at the German government are targeting a specific risk of foundational elements in tech being underfunded or overprotected.
Nullinker 5y ago
Because it is one of the primary functions of the government to prevent excesses in the free market so that generated wealth is spread out over many people in society as opposed to a only a few. Because people consider that unfair it often leads to destabilizing society causing even more suffering.

mahmoudhossam 5y ago

Maybe not unique to Germany, but the market failing to properly fund and support OSS software projects?

j-pb 5y ago
The mess we're in, in terms of software security and reliability, when it comes to the infrastructure that runs our world is a textbook case-study on how a free market with profit incentives is neither an efficient nor effective driver of an economic system. The drive for unsustainably externalised costs in both resource and labour exploitation, colloquially known as "pay peanuts, get monkeys", creates brittle systems with short term returns. The whole idea of infinite returns in the limit due to steady return from a one time investment is just a different spin on a perpetuum mobile. Entropy incurs a regular cost, be it supply chains, tools, workers, or software.
- hrhrhrhrhr 5y ago
  That's not really fair, software security is better than ever.
- newlisp 5y ago
  Hey, came across a comment of yours https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499058 in search engine results while researching the reasons to why learn Clojure as my next programming language. I'm curious if you have change your mind about it or still prefer JS for new projects? One thing that I find attractive about Clojure is Datomic (databases being a source of complexity in applications), its features like immutability(the db as a value, history), data structures as query language not strings, transactions and data model, OTOH, it's a scary niche black box. Also, the clojure REPL is a nice addition. I'm no stranger to lisps, having played with scheme and racket, know macros, watched some Hickey videos and overall understand clojure's philosophy and concepts but haven't never use it for a real world business application. I'm sure nodejs/postgres could suit my needs perfectly but the ergonomics/defaults of clojure/datomic makes me think things would be less tedious to develop.

Bromeo 5y ago

The statement here is that some "basic digital infrastructure" like compilers or security protocols are fundamental to every individuals participation in the "digital revolution". Therefore the government wants to fund some of this basic infrastructure in order to prevent it from going closed-source or proprietary. The point is that open-source software is not and should not be regulated by the market, as it should not be profit driven.

cappr 5y ago
But it should be regulated by a committee of people with no excellent open source histories?
- Bromeo 5y ago
  Establishing a fund is not the same as regulating the beneficiary. Compare for example with academia - universities in Europe are overwhelmingly government funded, yet they get a lot of freedom in what research they conduct.
- _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
  How do you know the evaluators won't have any open source history? Usually people who evaluate this proposals will have domain knowledge.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  What constitutes an "excellent open source history"? People that code often don't want to be bothered by organization and financial matters, and vice-versa, community work is still often disregarded as not truly open source work. Some people did sit down, did all the leg-work of getting funding for a study, did a study, published it (open source under CC-BY) - including a plan for the setup of the fund, cost analysis, how many people to employ and their pay (btw: roughly 10% of the budget, which seems reasonable at first glance), legal analysis of three funding models (1) and then someone with a random new internet account complains about their open source history (2) and their gender (3) (1) the government can't just go throw money at people without rules. (2) they at least have a published 50 page study (3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29683265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29683265

odiroot 5y ago

Being generally conservative (and especially in business) would be the main reason. Cannot go wrong with the government after all, right? Second reason may be strong lobbying from legacy IT concerns. They usually get government contracts and are usually viable for support from such funds.

hnhg 5y ago

It's not unique to Germany. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

JaimeThompson 5y ago

If only the government had not intervened, via ARPA, to push packed switched networking and had allowed AT&T to keep doing what they did just imagine what the Internet would be today!

mrtksn 5y ago

You can expect this to happen more and more as China demonstrated that innovation is indeed possible by government intervention. Another thing that was demonstrated at exactly same time was that it is possible to have decade long stagnation in an open market. I'm talking about the state of the Web and mobile has come to in the hands of FB, Google and others in the free market with no government interventions. The biggest sensation since many years is (China government supported) TikTok and the "free market" response to it was to try to ban it or force purchase it. My hope is, that countries like USA and UK will re-think their understanding of fairness in a free market and once again we will have fair and innovative free business environment but at this time and stage there's evidence that governmental intervention can yield innovation in stagnated markets. In this exact case, people at the German government are targeting a specific risk of foundational elements in tech being underfunded or overprotected.

Nullinker 5y ago

Because it is one of the primary functions of the government to prevent excesses in the free market so that generated wealth is spread out over many people in society as opposed to a only a few. Because people consider that unfair it often leads to destabilizing society causing even more suffering.