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Public Money, Public Code

publiccode.eu

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91–100 of 156 posts

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#91

Post by yarg »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #72
anonymous344 wrote: post #55

this has always puzzled me. Companies gets millions from the taxpayers to certain projects to develop their (something) Then another company get another million to develop same or similiar thing. Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ??

Because that would be bad for society. It's important that money moves around as much as possible--every time it does, value is created. Think of it like the water cycle. By increasing the output of the sun (enacting laws to keep publicly-funded code private), we cause lots more money to evaporate from the taxpayer oceans (by solving the same problem repeatedly), and that in turn creates lots more fiscalonimbus cloud…

What?

That money isn't disappearing, it goes to the company but also to its employees.

They then return it to the economy.

What you're suggesting is that the tax payers spend their money and get nothing in return - it's corporate socialism.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#92

Post by starefossen »

NoPain wrote: post #84
starefossen wrote: post #62

The largest branch of the Norwegian government, Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), have adopted this this policy since 2018 and now we have over 2000 public repositories on https://github.com/navikt and https://github.com/nais (last one is our platform organization)

I think we also celebrate with cake if someone have a pull request from someone else that get approved?

Yes, we definitely do that! Talking about cake, can someone form HN make a pull request, please?!

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#93

Post by ketzu »

anonymous344 wrote: post #55

this has always puzzled me. Companies gets millions from the taxpayers to certain projects to develop their (something) Then another company get another million to develop same or similiar thing. Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ??

> Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ??

Probably depends on the development in question, but in general the ability to resell something to someone else changes the calculations for contract work. If you want me to develop something and then own it is not the same deal as me developing something that I get to sell to someone else, too.

Some might also consider it undermining their own industry. Instead of building up software companies, it is essentially the government building a huge software department.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#94

Post by sylware »

Public money, public open source and lean code. Don't forget "open source" is not enough anymore, and "open source" can be private between a coder and its users, not public (that's why it is fine with defense related work).

I don't want public information systems to be dependent on open source bloat and kludge.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#95

Post by ketzu »

geysersam wrote: post #61
majormajor wrote: post #25

The point where it always breaks down for me is that I've never seen anyone lobby for moving more in the "VC Money, VC Code" direction. Labor has value and needs rewarding, not just capital.

I don't understand the argument. Municipalities / counties have many common software needs. If they collaborated on open source software we would likely get higher quality services at lower cost, what's bad about that?

Is them cooperating on open source software a realistic outcome? Or will there be many small, unmaintainable, slightly different, open projects? Why are they not already collaborating on closed source software?

Looking at the mess of customizations asked for software by companies doing the same thing, I can't imagine it would be different for counties/municipalities.

(edit: Please don't misunderstand, I am not against publicly funded open source, I am just not sure if all the arguments for it hold up that well)

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#96

Post by JellyBeanThief »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #72
anonymous344 wrote: post #55

this has always puzzled me. Companies gets millions from the taxpayers to certain projects to develop their (something) Then another company get another million to develop same or similiar thing. Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ??

Because that would be bad for society. It's important that money moves around as much as possible--every time it does, value is created. Think of it like the water cycle. By increasing the output of the sun (enacting laws to keep publicly-funded code private), we cause lots more money to evaporate from the taxpayer oceans (by solving the same problem repeatedly), and that in turn creates lots more fiscalonimbus cloud…

I kinda hoped that by the time people got as far as "fiscalonimbus" they would have caught on that this is a send up of economic conversations in internet comment threads.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#97

Post by irusensei »

I wish my home country current mindset wasn't that just suggesting that certain government code should be published as open source will paint you as a far right conspiracionist who doubts and attacks democracy. Yeah it's Brazil.

I remember a long decade spanning thread about the Brazilian government trying to shoehorn their super ca root into Mozilla cert database. Lots of arguments like "we audit ourselves and cherry pick a very strict number of academics to see our code and security methodologies".

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#98

Post by bregma »

ketzu wrote: post #93
anonymous344 wrote: post #55

this has always puzzled me. Companies gets millions from the taxpayers to certain projects to develop their (something) Then another company get another million to develop same or similiar thing. Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ??

> Why it is not a required that if you get taxpayers' money, the results should be available for free to everyone, let's say after 12 months of grace perioid ?? Probably depends on the development in question, but in general the ability to resell something to someone else changes the calculations for contract work. If you want me to develop something and then own it is not the same deal as me developing something tha…

> Some might also consider it undermining their own industry

Especially if that industry has evolved into suckling at the government's teat. Taxpayer milk is the sweetest milk.

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#99

Post by jWhick »

starefossen wrote: post #62

The largest branch of the Norwegian government, Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), have adopted this this policy since 2018 and now we have over 2000 public repositories on https://github.com/navikt and https://github.com/nais (last one is our platform organization)

Way to go Norway

Re: Public Money, Public Code

#100

Post by wongarsu »

knallfrosch wrote: post #79
nicbou wrote: post #77

I’ve heard those exact words from a government developer in Berlin and it felt really good to hear. Imagine making pull requests to improve government services! Some people would gladly do it.

Imagine getting 10,000 pull requests and 7 originate from KGB hackers that solve a real problem but contain a vulnerability.

So I guess the solution is to not use open source, and force the KGB to have their agents hired as regular employees instead?
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