3 ms·

Sometimes I think about governments paying for proprietary software. I wonder why not FLOSS? The answer I estimate: "There's no FLOSS replacement". Then I think

Sometimes I think about governments paying for proprietary software. I wonder why not FLOSS? The answer I estimate: "There's no FLOSS replacement". Then I think: "Why not pay for the development of a replacement?", the answer I estimate: "Because it would be even more expensive than using proprietary software. Which takes me to the next question: "Why don't many government unity to pay for FLOSS development?" For the last question I never got a reasonable answer. Probably the answer is just lack of coordination. If FLOSS became a need thing in even a small group of governments, I'm sure dependency on proprietary software in the public sector would diminish and that is a very good thing.

unilynx 5y ago
Governments are terrible at scope and requirements. Bring 10 local governments together to run development of a new FOSS software thingy and you’ll get something that none of the 10 would ever use in practice, if it ever gets finished at all
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Imagine a few governments donating some million dollars for LibreOffice every year for a decade. Wouldn't it make a difference?
  - unilynx 5y ago
    Probably. But I don’t see how that could happen regarding accountability. “Why is our municipality donating hundreds of thousands to something that is free whilst increasing ticket prices for the swimming pool?” At least with the idea of combining the funding of municipalities to build something together as FOSS, they’re not paying for something that already exists
specialist 5y ago
My one experience with a FOSS consortium was terrible. I got hired by a uni explicitly to work on FOSS. The project was Kuali Student. I didn't care about the stack, the language, or methodologies. I only cared about FOSS and governance. I wanted to learn how these orgs work. Amongst many, many other problems, Kuali is the living manifestation of Byran Cantrill's wisdom about why OpenSolaris failed: Although our team had the right to fork, we didn't have the power. So we couldn't ever fix stuff, nor feed patches upstream. We were reduced to mitigating and workarounds. For years. I fear that humans don't (yet) we have the governance technology to make FOSS consortiums viable. If anyone has success stories, please please share.
- rurban 5y ago
  can you expand how you were blocked? not allowed to send patches and PR's? because your work was copyrighted by your university?
  - specialist 5y ago
    Initially, no one considered the possibility. The necessary infrastructure was never built out. The owners of the repos became gatekeepers. So I'd create patches and then spin my wheels trying to get them submitted, reviewed, triaged, merged, released, etc. Consequently, a problem with anyone who maintains a fork is familiar with, keeping my patches up to date as upstream dropped new releases became ever more work. Ever hear of Pieter Hintjens, of ZeroMQ fame? I've since read most all of his (public) writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens His books are very good. Hintjens advocates the very open, generous policy of accepting and merging patches by default. Then do the hard work of review and finesse. I'd love to find and talk to maintainers who have experience with Hintjens' strategies. How does it work IRL? Of course ZeroMQ is a huge success. Is that success reproducible? Thanks for the followup question. I'd love to brainstorm with others about the practical challenges of FOSS orgs, maintenance, and so forth.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  There are many FLOSS projects with contributions from many different players from the 'industry'. From the top of my head a few complex ones: linux, gcc, llvm and apache.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - specialist 5y ago
    What governance models do they use? Any run as a consortium? Any orgs suitable for otherwise unrelated govts and agencies (local, county, state, fed)? I'm most familiar with Apache. While some individual projects do well, most do not. Any ideas what accounts for the different outcomes? Has anyone since adopted Apache's structure and governance? (I should probably read up about the orgs behind gcc and llvm. Clearly, llvm is doing something right.)

unilynx 5y ago

Governments are terrible at scope and requirements. Bring 10 local governments together to run development of a new FOSS software thingy and you’ll get something that none of the 10 would ever use in practice, if it ever gets finished at all

marcodiego 5y ago
Imagine a few governments donating some million dollars for LibreOffice every year for a decade. Wouldn't it make a difference?
- unilynx 5y ago
  Probably. But I don’t see how that could happen regarding accountability. “Why is our municipality donating hundreds of thousands to something that is free whilst increasing ticket prices for the swimming pool?” At least with the idea of combining the funding of municipalities to build something together as FOSS, they’re not paying for something that already exists

specialist 5y ago

My one experience with a FOSS consortium was terrible. I got hired by a uni explicitly to work on FOSS. The project was Kuali Student. I didn't care about the stack, the language, or methodologies. I only cared about FOSS and governance. I wanted to learn how these orgs work. Amongst many, many other problems, Kuali is the living manifestation of Byran Cantrill's wisdom about why OpenSolaris failed: Although our team had the right to fork, we didn't have the power. So we couldn't ever fix stuff, nor feed patches upstream. We were reduced to mitigating and workarounds. For years. I fear that humans don't (yet) we have the governance technology to make FOSS consortiums viable. If anyone has success stories, please please share.

rurban 5y ago
can you expand how you were blocked? not allowed to send patches and PR's? because your work was copyrighted by your university?
- specialist 5y ago
  Initially, no one considered the possibility. The necessary infrastructure was never built out. The owners of the repos became gatekeepers. So I'd create patches and then spin my wheels trying to get them submitted, reviewed, triaged, merged, released, etc. Consequently, a problem with anyone who maintains a fork is familiar with, keeping my patches up to date as upstream dropped new releases became ever more work. Ever hear of Pieter Hintjens, of ZeroMQ fame? I've since read most all of his (public) writings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Hintjens His books are very good. Hintjens advocates the very open, generous policy of accepting and merging patches by default. Then do the hard work of review and finesse. I'd love to find and talk to maintainers who have experience with Hintjens' strategies. How does it work IRL? Of course ZeroMQ is a huge success. Is that success reproducible? Thanks for the followup question. I'd love to brainstorm with others about the practical challenges of FOSS orgs, maintenance, and so forth.
marcodiego 5y ago
There are many FLOSS projects with contributions from many different players from the 'industry'. From the top of my head a few complex ones: linux, gcc, llvm and apache.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- specialist 5y ago
  What governance models do they use? Any run as a consortium? Any orgs suitable for otherwise unrelated govts and agencies (local, county, state, fed)? I'm most familiar with Apache. While some individual projects do well, most do not. Any ideas what accounts for the different outcomes? Has anyone since adopted Apache's structure and governance? (I should probably read up about the orgs behind gcc and llvm. Clearly, llvm is doing something right.)