5 ms·

Suppose you are on a committee where you are evaluating 3 different offers to build a website for your city. Bid A is for $10m, Bid B is for $9.5m, and Bid C i

Suppose you are on a committee where you are evaluating 3 different offers to build a website for your city. Bid A is for $10m, Bid B is for $9.5m, and Bid C is for $9m. The company that made offer B knows that they will likely lose the contract so they counter. "If you let us keep the source code and it remains private, we will bid $8.5m for the contract". Since all three vendors are offering equivalent service, and vendor B is offering a hefty $500,000 discount, how can you reasonably spend far more or your city's money? That money could have gone to improve schools or roads or make more competitive offers for city employees. How can you justify spending a half million more on software principle when there are other more pressing needs? Expecting software to be open source is nice when there is an army of 10s of thousands of FAANG employees to constantly keep it up to date, but less so when there's limited people. Sure, it hypothetically could be kept up to date by the generous and capable people of the city after the fact, but that's farfetched. It isn't realistic or practical for a budget-conscious software company to open them selves up to scrutiny, participate in the open source community, accept bug fixes, do code reviews from strangers, etc. It's more expensive to do OSS, not less. (As an example, the Linux Kernel is mainly made by large companies with lots of expensive employees. Pick your 10 favorite GitHub project with more than 10k stars and see who the primary contributors are.)

rasulkireev 4y ago
Well, making it open source is not the same as making regular citizens/programmers to work on it. You still pay the company to develop and maintain the software. Same way as open source developers get "sponsored". The reason is that anyone who wants to see the code and suggest on how to make it better, or to report a bug, then that would be possible. Furthermore, that work can be reused by other parts of the government. That last point is why some companies wouldn't want to do it, or would charge more. However, to your point, I think the increased cost is worth it in this case. Sure, there are going to be less better roads/schools by 500k, but the problem with that money is that there are rarely big projects for that amount, so it's not like they would be put to best use without being "lost" in the process of relocation.
8note 4y ago
Who will do the maintaining on the closed website though? One company has a monopoly on the support
squeaky-clean 4y ago
Just because code is released as open source doesn't mean you have any obligation to deal with feedback or PR's. You can throw it on a git hosting site and forget about it. You could gzip the entire source directory and throw it into an s3 bucket. You could burn it onto a CD and have it be available by mail-in request only with a fee for shipping. > Expecting software to be open source is nice when there is an army of 10s of thousands of FAANG employees to constantly keep it up to date, but less so when there's limited people. And being closed source makes keeping software up to date easier? The website is asking for "legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence." So in response to your example of a company bidding lower for closed-source rights, you would just deny the illegal request. Same as if a company offering to construct a bridge was undercutting other contractors on the condition they be allowed to ignore certain expensive safety requirements.
chii 4y ago
> How can you justify spending a half million more on software principle when there are other more pressing needs? if those other pressing needs are so pressing why aren't they looked into already, and is only mentioned when a tender offer is on the table? The gov't ought to consider each individual need individually and budget it individually. As for the company B offering 8.5m for keeping the source code private, i would argue that they are getting a better deal out of the gov't than the gov't is receiving. Imagine if the company B can resell the software for money to another govt. This means the initial gov't paid for the research and development of the software, but the company B is reaping the benefits - all for paying a measly $500k. If the software can sell for more than $500k to the 2nd customer, they'd have made pure profit. Therefore, the gov't who initially paid to do the R&D should actually own an equity stake in the software if it is to remain private. After all, the taxpayer funded the risk of R&D, and should partake the benefits of that risk.
joaogante 4y ago
> Pick your 10 favorite GitHub project with more than 10k stars and see who the primary contributors are. Hugging Face transformers has >60k stars and fewer than 30 employed maintainers, many sharing other responsibilities. Arguably, part its success comes external model contributions from FAANG companies (among others), but the key ingredient was the creation of an open platform. Disclaimer: I work there
prepend 4y ago
This is not possible as the requirement either forces OSS or doesn’t. Bidders can’t alter the requirements without the contract changing and everyone rebidding. Imagine a contract for a road that requires maintenance and the 9.5M bidder offers to lower by a million if they don’t provide maintenance.

rasulkireev 4y ago

Well, making it open source is not the same as making regular citizens/programmers to work on it. You still pay the company to develop and maintain the software. Same way as open source developers get "sponsored". The reason is that anyone who wants to see the code and suggest on how to make it better, or to report a bug, then that would be possible. Furthermore, that work can be reused by other parts of the government. That last point is why some companies wouldn't want to do it, or would charge more. However, to your point, I think the increased cost is worth it in this case. Sure, there are going to be less better roads/schools by 500k, but the problem with that money is that there are rarely big projects for that amount, so it's not like they would be put to best use without being "lost" in the process of relocation.

8note 4y ago

Who will do the maintaining on the closed website though? One company has a monopoly on the support

squeaky-clean 4y ago

Just because code is released as open source doesn't mean you have any obligation to deal with feedback or PR's. You can throw it on a git hosting site and forget about it. You could gzip the entire source directory and throw it into an s3 bucket. You could burn it onto a CD and have it be available by mail-in request only with a fee for shipping. > Expecting software to be open source is nice when there is an army of 10s of thousands of FAANG employees to constantly keep it up to date, but less so when there's limited people. And being closed source makes keeping software up to date easier? The website is asking for "legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed for the public sector be made publicly available under a Free and Open Source Software licence." So in response to your example of a company bidding lower for closed-source rights, you would just deny the illegal request. Same as if a company offering to construct a bridge was undercutting other contractors on the condition they be allowed to ignore certain expensive safety requirements.

chii 4y ago

> How can you justify spending a half million more on software principle when there are other more pressing needs? if those other pressing needs are so pressing why aren't they looked into already, and is only mentioned when a tender offer is on the table? The gov't ought to consider each individual need individually and budget it individually. As for the company B offering 8.5m for keeping the source code private, i would argue that they are getting a better deal out of the gov't than the gov't is receiving. Imagine if the company B can resell the software for money to another govt. This means the initial gov't paid for the research and development of the software, but the company B is reaping the benefits - all for paying a measly $500k. If the software can sell for more than $500k to the 2nd customer, they'd have made pure profit. Therefore, the gov't who initially paid to do the R&D should actually own an equity stake in the software if it is to remain private. After all, the taxpayer funded the risk of R&D, and should partake the benefits of that risk.

joaogante 4y ago

> Pick your 10 favorite GitHub project with more than 10k stars and see who the primary contributors are. Hugging Face transformers has >60k stars and fewer than 30 employed maintainers, many sharing other responsibilities. Arguably, part its success comes external model contributions from FAANG companies (among others), but the key ingredient was the creation of an open platform. Disclaimer: I work there

prepend 4y ago

This is not possible as the requirement either forces OSS or doesn’t. Bidders can’t alter the requirements without the contract changing and everyone rebidding. Imagine a contract for a road that requires maintenance and the 9.5M bidder offers to lower by a million if they don’t provide maintenance.