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Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative bu

Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.

Daishiman 2y ago
Capitalism naturally tends towards the concentration of large firms unless regulated; if anything the regulatory intervention is coming in too late.
joe_the_user 2y ago
"More effective" at what? The state using FOSS is great but that seems quite orthogonal to preventing monopoly abuse by proprietary software vendors. We can do both. Edit: I think you may be implying that having a variety of choices available would sufficient to prevent monopolies. That's not true as long as you have multiple companies able to cooperate in doing things like bundling, etc.
practicemaths 2y ago
I think the EU can & may be doing both. AFIK, at least a few countries & research entities over there are using FOSS, at least in part, as well as promoting it. Hypothetically just because a Government is using FOSS to operate does not mean a company can not still break antitrust rules.
naikrovek 2y ago
Here’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions are made by anything resembling a democracy. The open source model works for code. It does not work for design, and open source developers somehow believe they are as good of a designer as they are a developer, and that has never been true for anyone, ever. Asking that someone be forced to switch to Linux from Windows or Mac is akin to forcing them to use GIMP instead of Photoshop, and if that sounds like a perfectly fine thing to you, you are blind to some very important things. Being blind to those things is fine so long as you’re aware of that blindness.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  It isn’t trash, it just isn’t trying to provide a customer service like relationship for non-technical users. Why would any distro do that? It just seems like a headache, for no benefit.
  - naikrovek 2y ago
    It also isn’t trying to provide a cohesive API for the OS as a whole, or anything less than a complete nightmare for anyone who is used to things like standby working half the time. The Linux desktop is a pile of userland crapware piled into a trench coat, pretending to be a real desktop operating system.
- mr_toad 2y ago
  Modern windows with unmatched UI elements of various generations, horrible DPI scaling and frankly antiquated design elements is starting to look more like Linux than Linux.
- hifromwork 2y ago
  Most people interact with a computer only via web browser, office suite and maybe a few additional programs (zoom, teams). I think some of my family members almost wouldn't notice the difference if they were to suddenly start using Linux Mint. Your idea of what a desktop OS should be feels subjective. I'm using Linux as a desktop operating system for 20 years, I've used Windows before, I use Windows sometimes even today (currently only in VMs dedicated to malware analysis and reverse engineering tools), and - to me - Windows is much more annoying. This feels like personal preference and not an objective statement like you did.
bee_rider 2y ago
> It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. To be explicit, if governments want to use open source software, which seems like a pretty good idea, they of course need to be aware of the fact that lots of it is hobbyist stuff tossed out into the public square with no quality guarantees. To use open source code, the governments will have to fork and audit the code, and provide customer service for what is now their software. It can be done and it seems like a great way to make this stuff available for the non-technical community, but it isn’t free, of course.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > the governments will have to fork and audit the code Why would they do this? It’s not like they fork and audit the code that they’re using now. They just trust that it’s safe because they paid for it. Which probably sounds incredibly stupid to anyone who’s ever worked for big enterprise, or just followed the news really.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to have done your best (and maintained a reasonable level of professional competence) to ensure it is defect free. Lots of companies don’t take that very seriously, which is bad, and a great reason to switch away from them. At least the government can bring the CEO before congress and waste his day. With open source code the responsibility is taken by the user instead. For me, and probably a lot of people here, we all mostly just ignore that, but it’s fine, because we’re free to ignore our responsibility to ourselves. In the case of a government supplying open source code to their citizens, the responsibility defaults to the provider, that is, the government.
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      > When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to... > With open source code the responsibility is taken by the user instead. What is RHEL?
TrackerFF 2y ago
It is almost impossible to pitch software to the government unless it also comes with enterprise-scale customer support. 9 out of 10 times I’ve been part of the buy-side, proprietary software has won due to the support. Even more so when the end users aren’t technical people. If the software doesn’t come with support options from the vendor, you’ll have to look into third-parties for that - which means another entirely own contract, and set of people to involve.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Sure, but with open-source software and a third-party support contract, if you get mad at the support vendor, you can get a contract with someone else without having to change your software stack. I don't see how tying yourself to a single vendor is advantageous at all.
  - glasss 2y ago
    Unfortunately I don't think the market of third party support vendors for open source software is robust enough to have enough competitors that can provide the same quality (or at least promise of quality) as traditional vendor support from MSFT or another big company. You can say the market might emerge if the large corporations or government agencies started shifting that way and generated demand for it, but those entities aren't known to take risks.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Well, even now we already have Red Hat (IBM), SUSE, and Oracle providing support for enterprise customers for the Linux OS. The US government is a huge customer of Red Hat.
      - NekkoDroid 2y ago
        I don't remember where I read it, but wasn't like a majority of relativly big companies operating servers customers of Red Hat? I do know my mother is a customer with her business
127 2y ago
The problem here is that governments are really bad at building functional and cost-effective software 99% of the time and 99% of FOSS developers are always starved of resources.

Daishiman 2y ago

Capitalism naturally tends towards the concentration of large firms unless regulated; if anything the regulatory intervention is coming in too late.

joe_the_user 2y ago

"More effective" at what? The state using FOSS is great but that seems quite orthogonal to preventing monopoly abuse by proprietary software vendors. We can do both. Edit: I think you may be implying that having a variety of choices available would sufficient to prevent monopolies. That's not true as long as you have multiple companies able to cooperate in doing things like bundling, etc.

practicemaths 2y ago

I think the EU can & may be doing both. AFIK, at least a few countries & research entities over there are using FOSS, at least in part, as well as promoting it. Hypothetically just because a Government is using FOSS to operate does not mean a company can not still break antitrust rules.

naikrovek 2y ago

Here’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions are made by anything resembling a democracy. The open source model works for code. It does not work for design, and open source developers somehow believe they are as good of a designer as they are a developer, and that has never been true for anyone, ever. Asking that someone be forced to switch to Linux from Windows or Mac is akin to forcing them to use GIMP instead of Photoshop, and if that sounds like a perfectly fine thing to you, you are blind to some very important things. Being blind to those things is fine so long as you’re aware of that blindness.

bee_rider 2y ago
It isn’t trash, it just isn’t trying to provide a customer service like relationship for non-technical users. Why would any distro do that? It just seems like a headache, for no benefit.
- naikrovek 2y ago
  It also isn’t trying to provide a cohesive API for the OS as a whole, or anything less than a complete nightmare for anyone who is used to things like standby working half the time. The Linux desktop is a pile of userland crapware piled into a trench coat, pretending to be a real desktop operating system.
mr_toad 2y ago
Modern windows with unmatched UI elements of various generations, horrible DPI scaling and frankly antiquated design elements is starting to look more like Linux than Linux.
hifromwork 2y ago
Most people interact with a computer only via web browser, office suite and maybe a few additional programs (zoom, teams). I think some of my family members almost wouldn't notice the difference if they were to suddenly start using Linux Mint. Your idea of what a desktop OS should be feels subjective. I'm using Linux as a desktop operating system for 20 years, I've used Windows before, I use Windows sometimes even today (currently only in VMs dedicated to malware analysis and reverse engineering tools), and - to me - Windows is much more annoying. This feels like personal preference and not an objective statement like you did.

bee_rider 2y ago

> It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. To be explicit, if governments want to use open source software, which seems like a pretty good idea, they of course need to be aware of the fact that lots of it is hobbyist stuff tossed out into the public square with no quality guarantees. To use open source code, the governments will have to fork and audit the code, and provide customer service for what is now their software. It can be done and it seems like a great way to make this stuff available for the non-technical community, but it isn’t free, of course.

Aeolun 2y ago
> the governments will have to fork and audit the code Why would they do this? It’s not like they fork and audit the code that they’re using now. They just trust that it’s safe because they paid for it. Which probably sounds incredibly stupid to anyone who’s ever worked for big enterprise, or just followed the news really.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to have done your best (and maintained a reasonable level of professional competence) to ensure it is defect free. Lots of companies don’t take that very seriously, which is bad, and a great reason to switch away from them. At least the government can bring the CEO before congress and waste his day. With open source code the responsibility is taken by the user instead. For me, and probably a lot of people here, we all mostly just ignore that, but it’s fine, because we’re free to ignore our responsibility to ourselves. In the case of a government supplying open source code to their citizens, the responsibility defaults to the provider, that is, the government.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to... > With open source code the responsibility is taken by the user instead. What is RHEL?

TrackerFF 2y ago

It is almost impossible to pitch software to the government unless it also comes with enterprise-scale customer support. 9 out of 10 times I’ve been part of the buy-side, proprietary software has won due to the support. Even more so when the end users aren’t technical people. If the software doesn’t come with support options from the vendor, you’ll have to look into third-parties for that - which means another entirely own contract, and set of people to involve.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Sure, but with open-source software and a third-party support contract, if you get mad at the support vendor, you can get a contract with someone else without having to change your software stack. I don't see how tying yourself to a single vendor is advantageous at all.
- glasss 2y ago
  Unfortunately I don't think the market of third party support vendors for open source software is robust enough to have enough competitors that can provide the same quality (or at least promise of quality) as traditional vendor support from MSFT or another big company. You can say the market might emerge if the large corporations or government agencies started shifting that way and generated demand for it, but those entities aren't known to take risks.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Well, even now we already have Red Hat (IBM), SUSE, and Oracle providing support for enterprise customers for the Linux OS. The US government is a huge customer of Red Hat.
    - NekkoDroid 2y ago
      I don't remember where I read it, but wasn't like a majority of relativly big companies operating servers customers of Red Hat? I do know my mother is a customer with her business

127 2y ago

The problem here is that governments are really bad at building functional and cost-effective software 99% of the time and 99% of FOSS developers are always starved of resources.