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Governments turn to Open Source for sovereignty
- jahewson 3y agoKings of the hand-me-down StarOffice code.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pjio 3y agoNow, that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
- mffap 3y agoIs Germany funding the oss projects as well? Traditionally they have this mindset of free open source software, with a strong emphasis on free, while not factoring in the cost of maintaining a project. When the usage gets higher there should be a plan for sustainable progress and maintenance.
- amatecha 3y agoYes. Germany's "Sovereign Tech Fund" to support open source tech has made 11.5million Euros available for 2023: https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/faq https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/faq
- mffap 3y agoThanks for sharing, interesting. But the named components in the article seem not to have received funding.
- shapefrog 3y agohttps://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/110340953550548309 https://mastodon.matrix.org/@element/110340953550548309 "Yes, we fund Matrix dev by selling encrypted messaging to governments, which includes police: if you don’t like that then please feel free to use a different app."
- codethief 3y agoSo?
- PhilipRoman 3y agoI must admit I first read this as "we sell encrypted messages to governments" and spit my coffee from the surprise.
- Arathorn 3y agoyup, this was not my finest wording :(
- PokemonNoGo 3y agoGermany's funding of Gnome was discussed here on HN just last week event: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38228649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38228649
- SushiHippie 3y agoThere is also https://opencode.de/en/ueber-open-code https://opencode.de/en/ueber-open-code but I think this is less about funding EDIT: okay sorry, this was already mentionend in TFA
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoWow, so much! The corona app was €214m. Telekom and SAP were were happy to take that!
- hnaccount_rng 3y agoThat’s a widely repeated though at best highly misleading number. It includes all of the backup telephone bank system (for getting the TANs for the actual release [0]), the link to the public health system (for reporting) and the money to upgrade the lab systems so that these can enter the test results in the system. Unfortunately I never saw a splitted-out version of the budget, but from the list above I’d be surprised if even 10% went to the actual app(s) itself. [0] which, completely shockingly I know, massively reduced the number is released contact traces
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago„Demnach erhielten die Entwickler und Betreiber der App, die Firmen SAP und Deutsche Telekom, im Jahr 2020 52,8 Millionen Euro. Im Folgejahr stiegen die Ausgaben auf 78,8 Millionen Euro. 2022 sanken die Kosten auf 68,6 Millionen.” What’s misleading, exactly?
- hnaccount_rng 3y agoThe "Betreiber" part includes the phone banks, which, being operated 24/7/365 and scaled for 80m inhabitants, will run a tab pretty quickly (in particular since I never heard anyone having trouble getting a person on the phone). And the "Entwickler" part includes software upgrades on the lab systems, which (IIRC and I'm far too lazy to actually go and check) were a couple of thousand. Effectively they upgraded all the lab systems in Germany with that money. None of that is covered when I'm thinking about "developed an app for XX EUR". The money isn't the misleading part, it's the insinuation for what it was spend that's misleading. If you can dig up a itemised bill I'd be very interested, but I don't think anyone will get that in the next 10 years without a huge effort involving actual courts...
- pjmlp 3y agoYes, at least there are several public libraries running on Linux distributions.
- arkad 3y agoI admire Germany's approach and awareness. At least they try. There's 20-years old saga of linux vs windows battle in the Munich City Council [1]. Great case study. I'm very curious how this will work for them. It's quite a struggle to adopt OSS where the vast majority of users think "Office suite" == "M$ Office". [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
- pjmlp 3y agoI can confirm that a couple of public libraries have the computer terminals running some version of SuSE with KDE.
- ghaff 3y agoI'd say the vast majority of users think "Office suite" == "Google Docs." I don't know the last time I've touched a locally installed office suite whether MS Office or LibreOffice.
- freedomben 3y agoYour sample is not representative. Plenty of people still use MS Office. It's not only local install anymore either now that they have an online version.
- ghaff 3y agoIt's probably fairer to say Google Docs OR Office365--though in my personal experience I see Google a lot more. But how many people are actually installing local copies of office productivity suites? I certainly don't see them when people send documents around.
- jmyeet 3y agoI was just thinking the other day how strange it is that so many blindly defend capitalism but love open source. Those are inherently contradictory positions. Open source is inherently anti-capitalist. Some years ago some large company (Microsoft?) came out and called open source a huge destroyer of wealth. They're correct, in the capitalist sense. But as we (largely tech people) know: open source allows us all to net benefit, which in turns creates opportunities. Linux runs on billions of devices. This is collectivism in action. By extension, proprietary software (as noted here) makes governments beholden to private companies. I fully support Germany (and other countris) in embracing open sourrce.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> I was just thinking the other day how strange it is that so many blindly defend capitalism but love open source. Those are inherently contradictory positions. Open source is inherently anti-capitalist. Are they? Open source is inherently anti-copyright, but copyright is not inherently capitalist. Copyright is a restraint on trade enforced by the sovereign. Saying "open source is inherently anti-capitalist" looks similar to saying "smuggling is inherently anti-capitalist". The logic is not obvious.
- jmyeet 3y agoSmuggling is just an illegal form of commerce. I think by "copyright" you really mean "intellectual property" (of which copyright is one part). Open source is really unrelated to IP. Open source has its own licenses and constraints just like proprietary software. Like I can make an open source H265 decoder but I could still get sued for violating MPAA patents. But here's the key point: proprietary software is wealth extraction. Wealth extraction is what capitalism really is. Collective action, often volunteered, creates a free alternative for something that you previously had to pay for, thus bypassing that enclosure and wealth extraction. That's why it's anti-capitalist.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Wealth extraction is what capitalism really is. You might want to find a definition that allows you to converse with other people. It is generally not productive to assign your own personal meanings to words in common use. > Open source is really unrelated to IP. Why do you think open source takes the form of copyright licenses? Open source is a reaction against copyright, which puts the software back in the state you'd find it in if there were no copyright laws. It's not unrelated to IP; it is defined entirely by reference to IP law.
- jowea 3y agoIs it just me that finds it weird the EU, and specially Russia/China/Iran don't strongly support OS and/or Linux for that reason?
- vbezhenar 3y agoLinux is American software. How would they support it? They do have their own Linux distributions and derivatives. But contributing might be problematic, both from sending side (you're helping Americans, you're traitor) and from receiving side (can't accept contributions from Russians, might contain backdoors or might violate sanctions, not safe).
- lambertsimnel 3y agoI hate to be a GNU-Linux pedant, but isn't it GNU that's American, while Linux (the kernel) is European?
- amatecha 3y agoLinux Foundation is a US nonprofit[0], maybe that's what they're getting at? /shrug [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation
- vbezhenar 3y agoCounting by contributions, most are from US companies. Only Huawei is a notable exception. Linus is an American citizen, AFAIK. Linux Foundation is US company.
- jowea 3y agoI don't think nationality is that important for FOSS. I can see why cooperating with the original efforts centred in the USA/Europe might be problematic, but there's little stopping those governments from copying the code and working on it internally. And might contain backdoors or might violate sanctions" is the exact reason those countries should be thinking about it! Btw, it seems my premise is incorrect, I thought only North Korea was doing a serious effort, but at least from Wikipedia it seems both Russia and China are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Operating_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Operating_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux
- fabifabulous 3y agoAs a teacher from Germany I love this idea. Please, give it to schools as well. All other (American) options seem to be a privacy nightmare or just too expensive.
- yorwba 3y agoYou might be interested in the Netzwerk Freie Schulsoftware https://digitalcourage.de/netzwerk-freie-schulsoftware https://digitalcourage.de/netzwerk-freie-schulsoftware
- mxuribe 3y ago> ...All other (American) options seem to be a privacy nightmare or just too expensive... As someone born, raised and living/working in America (but with roots from South America), and who has been at odds with my kid's school system over these precise issues, I agree, the options available from predominantly American companies and used in American schools sucks badly! While western style capitalism might make sense in some areas of society, i think education should not be so blaringly driven by western style capitalism...the incentives perverse too much the goals of education system, and to the detriment of the children being educated, the taxpayers paying into the system to enable a good education system, these same children/students who in the future will lead the society, etc. Sorry, didn't mean to make it politicial...its simply annoying for me...And, i'm usuaully the person in discussions who is not minding paying full taxes - when they're used responsibily, because i understand having a society that is as educated as possible helps the future of all society in so many ways. Ok, i'm off my soap box now. Please carry on. :-) EDIT/ADDENDUM: Sorry @Hiko0, I meant to add: Thanks for all that you do as a teacher!!! Its not an easy profession as it used to be (at least not in America). ;-)
- hcks 3y agoIt’s been 20 years of well-intended governmental initiatives to reinvent the text editor and waste millions of taxpayer money. What’s the end goal? What are we trying to achieve here?
- makomk 3y agoNote that one of the projects on this list - Element - recently changed their license to one intended to make it impractical to deploy the open source version and make users buy commercial proprietary licences instead for the specific reason that governments were buying support for their software from companies other than them and they wanted to stop that. Which I think shows a pretty big practical limitation of this approach.
- SenAnder 3y agoAre you referring to their Affero GPL relicensing? That only makes it impractical to deploy versions with proprietary alterations, no?
- makomk 3y agoThe AGPLv3 is designed to ban versions with proprietary alternations full stop. In order to do that, it places some pretty daunting requirements on any modification - even open source ones. The moment you make any change, you must ensure that all users interacting with the software over the network are offered an opportunity to receive the corresponding source and that offer must be prominent. The original software does not have to include a way to offer such notices, just updating any existing code that does to point to the modified source is not necessarily sufficient to comply (unlike with the previous Affero GPL), and the protocols it relies on don't even have to be designed in a way that makes this feasible. It's not clear how this would even work with a federated chat protocol.
- yorwba 3y ago> The original software does not have to include a way to offer such notices, just updating any existing code that does to point to the modified source is not necessarily sufficient to comply This is not what the license says. "If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so." https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
- zirgs 3y agoIt's so weird that free and open source software is the only option for non-free authoritarian countries like North Korea and Russia.
- pjmlp 3y agoAnd everyone else, after all Apple, Microsoft and Google are all American, and we might not always be under their good graces for export restrictions.
- davidy123 3y agoThe problem is they are chasing a 1990s vision of computing, office suites in particular. They're just creating more silos. By this point, they should be working with data and schemas, not documents. Documents are just a by product. Open Source has an embarrassing tendency to think this 1990s vision of a desktop & office suite is an end point, but it's just a distraction Microsoft will always dominate. Open Source would have been better off trying to create a futuristic 3270 but more seriously taking the Web design to heart (including Linked Data). People are just not that good at organizing in groups and information is too diverse to leave to individuals to categorize in blobby programs with arbitrary fields in hierarchical files and folders, so inconsistency and disconnected work is the result. This is at the height of its bad in government. Now we are at the point where AI can serve as a connector, with careful use (it would have been much better if organizing data had been the main priority of people). For example, referenced documents created by AI on data with a final group review, the perfect use case of efficient and effective AI integration. But Microsoft is at the top of that heap, in terms of information capture (even if it's not accessed by them directly), capability and authority. Meanwhile Open Source is still talking about a new desktop music player and how to use grep.
- traceroute66 3y agoIts interesting that OX are on the list, because OX appear to be going down the road of freezing open-source featureset and reserving (new) advanced features for their commercial customers. The Dovecot commercial product manager has for example said in a presentation[1]: "there will be an open source version, but that open source version will be maintained for single server use only. we are actually taking out anything any actually kinda' involves multiple servers, dsync replication and err some other stuff. so dovecot will be a fully-featured single node server" [1] https://youtu.be/s-JYrjCKshA?feature=shared&t=912 https://youtu.be/s-JYrjCKshA?feature=shared&t=912
- gumballindie 3y agoThis is one thing that germany does right and should be adopted through ought the eu. It’s one of the rare reasons i think germany should use its diktats to steer all eu governments into using open source. The Uk on the other hand, now that it’s #out and took “are” country back will likely mandate spyware installed by default and “you’re” data made available to corpos by law - cctv installed in your homes by default and perhaps speakers to announce the great achievements of whoever the unelected prime minister of the time is.
- nnurmanov 3y agoHow does this affect corporate software vendors? Oracle, SAP?
- freedomben 3y agoThis is truly wonderful! I love Germany's committment to open source. I think that all governments should be going this route, particularly given their revenue comes from the people, it should be used in a way that maximally benefits the people. They also recently announced €1M in funding for Gnome: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38284787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38284787