Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 90 posts

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#51

Post by yorwba »

skinkestek wrote: post #44
acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

> Governments should develop and run opensource... Happy to say that I am working on such a project. Heavy (and unnecessary NDA) so I cannot say in cleartext but it is in use in one Nordic country already, it is opensource and already I hear that the Dutch found it to be a good starting point and probably will be using it too. Some more details, the company I work for is owned by one country but doesn't compete as mu…

It's open source but you can't talk about it? How does that even work?

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#52

Post by computerfriend »

yorwba wrote: post #51
skinkestek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments should develop and run opensource... Happy to say that I am working on such a project. Heavy (and unnecessary NDA) so I cannot say in cleartext but it is in use in one Nordic country already, it is opensource and already I hear that the Dutch found it to be a good starting point and probably will be using it too. Some more details, the company I work for is owned by one country but doesn't compete as mu…

It's open source but you can't talk about it? How does that even work?

It depends on the motives. E.g. they hire Palentir but don't want to have those bad associations, so NDA the Palentir contractors working on it.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#53

Post by open-source-ux »

acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

It is happening, albeit in a bit of a patchy, ad-hoc way. One example is International Design in Government:

https://international.gov-design.com/

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#54

Post by m4r35n357 »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #39

Munich made headlines for deciding to switch to linux in 2003 and decided to go back to windows in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux I still don't understand why major nations don't create or help create national OSes for their own countries/industries. You would think an OS is national security issue at the very least. A municipality isn't going to cut it. It's going to require a major national effort to sta…

Bean counters prefer to pay others to "make those problems seem to go away".

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#55

Post by luckylion »

em-bee wrote: post #42
luckylion wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would also put the risk on the government though. What if their software is shit? Tax money wasted. Buying software has the benefit that the manufacturer carries the risk. Imho, they should set standards, APIs, file formats etc to enable competition and keep vendor lock-in to a minimum.

which risk? a software company is going to make sure that their risk is covered financially. so if the software turns out to be useless, they will sure find a way to shift the blame and get paid anyways.

Unless it's paid-to-build, the software company's risk is creating the software and then not being able to sell it because a different software is better.

Communal software isn't always custom-built, the majority is normal off-the-shelf stuff, just focused on that niche. My involvement is limited to a small city a few years ago, that may be different in a large city as Munich if they have lots of custom requirements they don't share with other cities.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#56

Post by Brian_K_White »

mikekchar wrote: post #24
acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

While I completely agree with you, there is a compelling argument for governments spending tax payer money on goods from local companies rather than competing with them. Of course, I don't think I would class MS as a "local company" for Munich ;-). I'm just saying that there are lots of reasonable points of view on this topic.

Same governmemt can spend the same money within the same local economy by paying programmers. There is no valid reason and not that many "reasonable points of view" about paying a private company 5000 times over for the same piece of software, and still not owning it or being able to get full functionality out of it or being able to see into it or your taxpayers (who are subject to it's operation) being able to see into it, vs paying programmers to write the same thing 1 times over and then you DO own it and can get full functionality out of it and can see into it, and every town in your whole country can use it with no legal burden, no audits, no broken license mangers... And tomorrow, instead of paying for another 100 copies of the same license yet again, you can pay those programmers to make what you have even better or build the next new thing.

There is no valid reason to just pay rent to anyone for nothing, even if they are a local company. That's not a good enough reason.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#57

Post by dijit »

eesmith wrote: post #31
beefield wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make it illegal to price discriminate on software sales. I.e, if you sell a piece of software at one unit price to someone, you are obliged to sell with that price to anyone who wants it. Obviously that would disrupt quite a few existing business models in software industry, so do not take that as a completely serious proposal.

Year ago I remember learning about appliance stores who advertise "lowest prices guaranteed!" More specifically, if you can find another place which sells the same model for less, then you get it for the other price. Thing is, they are the only seller of that model. The vendor has a model X123 for that shop, a model X124 for another place, etc. And that shop is the only one who can sell that specific model. So they o…

> More specifically, if you can find another place which sells the same model for less, then you get it for the other price.

> Thing is, they are the only seller of that model. The vendor has a model X123 for that shop, a model X124 for another place, etc. And that shop is the only one who can sell that specific model. So they of course have the lowest price.

This is endemic in the mattress industry. Products that are identical and manufactured by the same company will be relabelled based on the company that buys them.

That's why your "dream-air luxury liner" could not get a discount because the other company has a "dream-air luxury comfort", which is the same exact product.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#58

Post by Merem »

acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

Absolutely. Where I live, the city administration sent a survey to people, asking what projects to tackle, where to save money/increase income etc etc. One of the options in the "saving money" category was going open source. You can bet it was one of the things I chose and in the end, it ranked 3rd which is not bad. Will be interesting to see how the administration will vote on it.
Post reply on HN