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There are four reasons this is difficult to actually work: A. Most people in government positions don't know/care about open source. Nobody will educate them f
by spapas82 3y ago
There are four reasons this is difficult to actually work:
A. Most people in government positions don't know/care about open source. Nobody will educate them for the following reasons.
B. Most private implementors don't want to open source stuff because it will make easier for other companies to study their code, making it easy for them to get contracts for updates to that code. Avoiding open source in general also increases the total cost so more profit for the implementing party (fe selling also Oracle licenses is much better than using postgresql)
C. Code in the open is easier to be audited by hackers for exploits. This is even more problematic because government code is supported by private contracts and may be left unsopported for some time due to bureaucracy.
D. This is the most important. Open sourcing projects opens the door for cost auditing. We've seen crazy things like simple CMSs costing millions of euros. Although these may be simple wordpress sites, they get away with them because they can say that they are custom implemented, have huge back office etc. Open sourcing them will reveal the scam.
Source: I work in a public sector organisation in an EU country and have dealt many times with projects by outside contractors.
- pms 3y agoYou point out that things are not as they should be and argue that changing them will be hard, because that's how they are... to me, these points are a great motivation to introduce the legislature: A. Such initiatives make government aware of the value of open-source systems to the public. B. Ok, then this legislature would contribute to the reduction of inequality. C. Better to fix bugs early than wait until they have catastrophic consequences. D. Are you saying that we should let bad things continue happening?
- spapas82 3y agoA. Few people outside of tech care; this won't bring votes. B. Yes but the private contractors like the current status quo. More profit for them. C. It's not always possible. Bureaucracy is a very big factor in such cases and it can't be fixed. D. Of course not. The thing is that there are a lot of people that "profit" from this situation. And unfortunately these are more or less the same people that can decide in favour of making the open source everything move. And because of A there won't be much pressure for changes.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoB. I work for public institutions, and I use Postgres, not Oracle. When Docker Desktop hit, we moved to podman. Public procurement is a hell, Open Source is the default option and only RedHat and VMWare still reap billions in profits from new public contracts.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoA. Tech is huge. 4% of US workforce is the universally cited number. EU ICT workers are 9 mln out of 193mln workforce, this is 4.7%. We are just not aware of our political power.
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoC. Biggest roadblock to opensourcing is low quality of code. When we open-source, it is usually total crap that only hinders the image of public institutions. Really important, high-value code stays in private hands like this price matching algorithm for EU energy markets [1] [1] https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/globalassets/download-center/single-day-ahead-coupling/euphemia-public-description.pdf https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/globalassets/download-center/s...
- sam_lowry_ 3y agoD. How would you audit open source? Using sloccount and its estimate of man-hours based on Basic COCOMO model? This is laughable at best. Yes, it puts public spending under scrutiny and puts public institutions into a defense position. But this is how things are in healthy democracies already.
- specialist 3y agoA, Not my experience. B, Because they're chasing the market valuation of software companies, not services / consulting companies. C, Untrue. D, Sure. Revolving door promotions, conflict of interest, yadda yadda. More reason to advocate FOSS.