10 ms·

Open source software is a textbook example of a public good. It seems blindingly obvious that it should be taxpayer funded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_

Open source software is a textbook example of a public good. It seems blindingly obvious that it should be taxpayer funded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

lacker 17y ago
It can already be partially taxpayer funded if it gets set up as a 501c3 charitable organization.
dpatru 17y ago
Rather than seek to coerce your fellows, just give money yourself to the causes you like and encourage others to do the same. If you and a just a hundred others give one hundred dollars per month, Rick would be making a nice salary. And no one would have to be coerced. This way, besides supporting useful software, you're also supporting something even more important: a free society.
- JesseAldridge 17y ago
  That kind of idealism falls short because of the free-rider problem. See the above link.
  - pelle 17y ago
    You could then counter argue that the project that you wish to support through force becomes a free-rider it self as the project beneficiaries don't have to compete in the economic market the same way as those forced to pay for them are. Voluntary doesn't always work but is always preferable over forced.
    - JesseAldridge 17y ago
      The project itself would not be a free-rider, because it would need to provide sufficient value to justify its cost. In a government system, expert judges are the conventional way of making this assessment. True, you would lose conventional market incentives, but you would gain all the benefits that history has shown come from open source: higher quality, lower cost, free exchange of ideas, etc. For projects such as Clojure, which don't have an obvious business model, there is no better way to secure funding. Force should be used when it will yield great benefits for society.
      - dpatru 17y ago
        > Force should be used when it will yield great benefits for society. I agree with you that force should be used when it will yield great benefits. But I would define the greatest benefit to be liberty. Force should be used to defend liberty. The freedom govern one's own life and make one's own decisions is worth a lot more than the benefits of open-source software. The irony is that societies that value freedom over more tangible benefits like software tend to have more of both than societies that give up freedom for material benefits.
        Robin_Message 17y ago
        If liberty is that important, don't you think there are more important arenas to fight in than funding of public goods? For example, Guantanamo bay and the so called "Patriot" Act?
  - ewanmcteagle 17y ago
    This is a problem with open source and an argument against it. Does it really make sense to give something away and then complain that people just don't pay enough for it and should be forced to do so?
  - dpatru 17y ago
    So what if some people are free riders? What is that to you? Don't give up on a free society just because its costs are not equally distributed. By advocating government support, your saying that you want government to take by force from a bunch of people who couldn't care less about this software you like, so that you can continue using it for very little cost. You're exchanging everybody's freedom for your convenience. This is diametrically opposed to the attitude of the people who won freedom by giving up a lot of their own conveniences, like their property, the use of their limbs, and even their lives, so that their countrymen, most of whom they didn't know, could enjoy a little more freedom from taxation and other freedoms from government control. Sure this is idealism, but it's idealism that's worth at least arguing and voting for. If you personally don't have enough money to support all the causes you want to support, persuade others to join you, don't try to force them. Also, one reason for you having less money is that government has taken a lot of it to fund things that other voters have thought important enough to sacrifice your freedom for. Don't perpetuate the problem. Besides, if Rick really wanted to, he could charge for clojure as he explains in his appeal. He could in effect, force his users to make the choice to fund him or forego using his product. Right now, users are not forced to make this choice. But that choice is still available to them. If he could get government funding by simply being open source, he would in effect be taking away users' choice to fund him. Users would be forced to fund him whether or not they used his product.
pelle 17y ago
Who defines what is a public good? Very few things truly come under this concept if you look at it objectively. However it is alway easy to find things that you like and you think everyone else really should like that you might consider a public good. There are lots of examples of OSS being funded through a variety of ways without well meaning folks robbing other peoples money.
- JesseAldridge 17y ago
  Gaah. Only on Hacker News could I find so many objections to this straight-forward, widely accepted idea. From the first two sentences of the linked Wikipedia article: "In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good." I think you would be hard pressed to find a better example than open source software. Yes, obviously open source can be funded in a variety of ways, but supply falls short of demand due to the free-rider problem. How many more Rich Hickeys could we have if open-source software was a safe career decision?
  - arohner 17y ago
    To a lot of entrepreneurs, especially Americans, "taxpayer funded" sends shivers. It implies bureaucracy, paperwork, lengthy approval times and political correctness. In many ways, it is the complete antithesis of the hacker-entrepreneur mindset. You're right that OSS is a great example of a free rider problem, but your cure is worse than the disease.
    - JesseAldridge 17y ago
      I understand that. I too am an American hacker-entrepreneur with an aversion to bureaucracy. But I think this is the least bad of the potential solutions. All we need is a few government sanctioned pg's, judging whether or not various projects are worthy of taxpayer dollars.
gojomo 17y ago
Open source software isn't quite a 'textbook example' because the classic concept of 'public goods' predates nearly-free, perfect digital reproduction. The 'textbook' definition is 'non-excludable and non-rivalrous', meaning: you can't stop people from benefiting from it (non-excludable) and one person's benefit doesn't 'use it up' for another person (non-rivalrous). Well, you can exclude people from using software in a variety of ways (secrecy/contracts, technical measures, copyright law). That someone chooses to give software away doesn't make it 'non-excludable' and thus subject to classic public-goods analysis. Also, the choice of how to provide non-excludable goods that may be challenging to finance doesn't reduce simply to "if free riders are a problem, then taxpayers should fund". Lots of other cultural/institutional arrangements are possible -- the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics went to work into the variety of arrangements used by societies to manage common resources. A movement to have 'taxpayers' subsidize open source is just as likely to lead to overfunding for the wrong reasons as 'right-sized funding' which exactly offsets the underproduction theoretically caused by free-riders.
- JesseAldridge 17y ago
  Open source software is a different thing from closed source software. Code holds far greater value by virtue of being open: an infinite number of people can use it, bugs are more easily found, ways of improving the code are more easily discussed, etc. But in order to get these benefits, it must be non-excludable. I didn't know about the 2009 Nobel stuff. Can you point me to a layman's summary by any chance? I think you are overreaching when you say my scheme "is just as likely to lead to overfunding". Qualified economists could determine the budget. The money would be guided by intelligent judges toward worthy projects. Surely an imperfect solution is better than ignoring the problem.
  - gojomo 17y ago
    Yes, open source software is unique and special. But that's another reason it doesn't fit neatly as a 'textbook' example of a public good. The classical excludable/rivalrous analysis didn't even consider things that could be non-excludable by choice, or which might improve qualitatively by being non-excludable. That novelty cuts both ways. That an open source software producer can't capture the full value by charging a fee would tend to lead to underproduction. But costless communication, redistribution, and sharing-back means they get value in many other ways -- reputation, code improvements, increased sales of excludable complement products, etc. This is again why the analysis has to be more sophisticated than "if free riders are a problem, then taxpayers should fund". The Nobel winner was Elinor Ostrum. MarginalRevolution had a high-level summary: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10/elinor-ostrom-and-the-wellgoverned-commons.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10... "Qualified economists could determine the budget"? With this and your comment about "a few government sanctioned pg's" I see that you put a lot more trust in disinterested experts and bureaucrats to hand out large sums of money than I do. That process -- boards of politically-favored individuals handing out money -- does not converge on the optimal level of funding/production. We know that with as much certainty as we know there can be problems with private underprovision of classical public goods. But really, what is the "problem" for which an "imperfect solution" is better than nothing? Open source is booming. People love to create it even for nonmonetary reasons -- so perhaps we already have an inefficient surplus. (Maybe hobbyist open source work should be taxed!) Meanwhile, governments are having a hard time managing their traditional public goods duties and tax flows in an efficient, sustainable manner. You want to give them a new portfolio of economic responsibilities?

lacker 17y ago

It can already be partially taxpayer funded if it gets set up as a 501c3 charitable organization.

dpatru 17y ago

Rather than seek to coerce your fellows, just give money yourself to the causes you like and encourage others to do the same. If you and a just a hundred others give one hundred dollars per month, Rick would be making a nice salary. And no one would have to be coerced. This way, besides supporting useful software, you're also supporting something even more important: a free society.

JesseAldridge 17y ago
That kind of idealism falls short because of the free-rider problem. See the above link.
- pelle 17y ago
  You could then counter argue that the project that you wish to support through force becomes a free-rider it self as the project beneficiaries don't have to compete in the economic market the same way as those forced to pay for them are. Voluntary doesn't always work but is always preferable over forced.
  - JesseAldridge 17y ago
    The project itself would not be a free-rider, because it would need to provide sufficient value to justify its cost. In a government system, expert judges are the conventional way of making this assessment. True, you would lose conventional market incentives, but you would gain all the benefits that history has shown come from open source: higher quality, lower cost, free exchange of ideas, etc. For projects such as Clojure, which don't have an obvious business model, there is no better way to secure funding. Force should be used when it will yield great benefits for society.
    - dpatru 17y ago
      > Force should be used when it will yield great benefits for society. I agree with you that force should be used when it will yield great benefits. But I would define the greatest benefit to be liberty. Force should be used to defend liberty. The freedom govern one's own life and make one's own decisions is worth a lot more than the benefits of open-source software. The irony is that societies that value freedom over more tangible benefits like software tend to have more of both than societies that give up freedom for material benefits.
      - Robin_Message 17y ago
        If liberty is that important, don't you think there are more important arenas to fight in than funding of public goods? For example, Guantanamo bay and the so called "Patriot" Act?
- ewanmcteagle 17y ago
  This is a problem with open source and an argument against it. Does it really make sense to give something away and then complain that people just don't pay enough for it and should be forced to do so?
- dpatru 17y ago
  So what if some people are free riders? What is that to you? Don't give up on a free society just because its costs are not equally distributed. By advocating government support, your saying that you want government to take by force from a bunch of people who couldn't care less about this software you like, so that you can continue using it for very little cost. You're exchanging everybody's freedom for your convenience. This is diametrically opposed to the attitude of the people who won freedom by giving up a lot of their own conveniences, like their property, the use of their limbs, and even their lives, so that their countrymen, most of whom they didn't know, could enjoy a little more freedom from taxation and other freedoms from government control. Sure this is idealism, but it's idealism that's worth at least arguing and voting for. If you personally don't have enough money to support all the causes you want to support, persuade others to join you, don't try to force them. Also, one reason for you having less money is that government has taken a lot of it to fund things that other voters have thought important enough to sacrifice your freedom for. Don't perpetuate the problem. Besides, if Rick really wanted to, he could charge for clojure as he explains in his appeal. He could in effect, force his users to make the choice to fund him or forego using his product. Right now, users are not forced to make this choice. But that choice is still available to them. If he could get government funding by simply being open source, he would in effect be taking away users' choice to fund him. Users would be forced to fund him whether or not they used his product.

pelle 17y ago

Who defines what is a public good? Very few things truly come under this concept if you look at it objectively. However it is alway easy to find things that you like and you think everyone else really should like that you might consider a public good. There are lots of examples of OSS being funded through a variety of ways without well meaning folks robbing other peoples money.

JesseAldridge 17y ago
Gaah. Only on Hacker News could I find so many objections to this straight-forward, widely accepted idea. From the first two sentences of the linked Wikipedia article: "In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good." I think you would be hard pressed to find a better example than open source software. Yes, obviously open source can be funded in a variety of ways, but supply falls short of demand due to the free-rider problem. How many more Rich Hickeys could we have if open-source software was a safe career decision?
- arohner 17y ago
  To a lot of entrepreneurs, especially Americans, "taxpayer funded" sends shivers. It implies bureaucracy, paperwork, lengthy approval times and political correctness. In many ways, it is the complete antithesis of the hacker-entrepreneur mindset. You're right that OSS is a great example of a free rider problem, but your cure is worse than the disease.
  - JesseAldridge 17y ago
    I understand that. I too am an American hacker-entrepreneur with an aversion to bureaucracy. But I think this is the least bad of the potential solutions. All we need is a few government sanctioned pg's, judging whether or not various projects are worthy of taxpayer dollars.

gojomo 17y ago

Open source software isn't quite a 'textbook example' because the classic concept of 'public goods' predates nearly-free, perfect digital reproduction. The 'textbook' definition is 'non-excludable and non-rivalrous', meaning: you can't stop people from benefiting from it (non-excludable) and one person's benefit doesn't 'use it up' for another person (non-rivalrous). Well, you can exclude people from using software in a variety of ways (secrecy/contracts, technical measures, copyright law). That someone chooses to give software away doesn't make it 'non-excludable' and thus subject to classic public-goods analysis. Also, the choice of how to provide non-excludable goods that may be challenging to finance doesn't reduce simply to "if free riders are a problem, then taxpayers should fund". Lots of other cultural/institutional arrangements are possible -- the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics went to work into the variety of arrangements used by societies to manage common resources. A movement to have 'taxpayers' subsidize open source is just as likely to lead to overfunding for the wrong reasons as 'right-sized funding' which exactly offsets the underproduction theoretically caused by free-riders.

JesseAldridge 17y ago
Open source software is a different thing from closed source software. Code holds far greater value by virtue of being open: an infinite number of people can use it, bugs are more easily found, ways of improving the code are more easily discussed, etc. But in order to get these benefits, it must be non-excludable. I didn't know about the 2009 Nobel stuff. Can you point me to a layman's summary by any chance? I think you are overreaching when you say my scheme "is just as likely to lead to overfunding". Qualified economists could determine the budget. The money would be guided by intelligent judges toward worthy projects. Surely an imperfect solution is better than ignoring the problem.
- gojomo 17y ago
  Yes, open source software is unique and special. But that's another reason it doesn't fit neatly as a 'textbook' example of a public good. The classical excludable/rivalrous analysis didn't even consider things that could be non-excludable by choice, or which might improve qualitatively by being non-excludable. That novelty cuts both ways. That an open source software producer can't capture the full value by charging a fee would tend to lead to underproduction. But costless communication, redistribution, and sharing-back means they get value in many other ways -- reputation, code improvements, increased sales of excludable complement products, etc. This is again why the analysis has to be more sophisticated than "if free riders are a problem, then taxpayers should fund". The Nobel winner was Elinor Ostrum. MarginalRevolution had a high-level summary: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10/elinor-ostrom-and-the-wellgoverned-commons.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/10... "Qualified economists could determine the budget"? With this and your comment about "a few government sanctioned pg's" I see that you put a lot more trust in disinterested experts and bureaucrats to hand out large sums of money than I do. That process -- boards of politically-favored individuals handing out money -- does not converge on the optimal level of funding/production. We know that with as much certainty as we know there can be problems with private underprovision of classical public goods. But really, what is the "problem" for which an "imperfect solution" is better than nothing? Open source is booming. People love to create it even for nonmonetary reasons -- so perhaps we already have an inefficient surplus. (Maybe hobbyist open source work should be taxed!) Meanwhile, governments are having a hard time managing their traditional public goods duties and tax flows in an efficient, sustainable manner. You want to give them a new portfolio of economic responsibilities?