11–20 of 92 posts
the cookie popups are next level on this site
They are possibly illegal or at least against the law's spirit, which is ironic, because Heise is a relatively well respected publisher among German IT professionals.
public means public, if something is paid for by tax money, it should be licensed for public use
This often a complicated case regarding competition law. In our neoliberal world giving away something for free that was subsidized is often seen as destroying market. The national CIO of Germany at one time recommended public bodies to us copyleft (also the EC opted for EPL) , rather than putting it into public domain. I also like this idea. However, this is fundamentaly different from the US. The German weather ser…
the article does not say if the public has a stake in the private entity created to do this, which makes me curious why this path was chosen in the first place
public means public, if something is paid for by tax money, it should be licensed for public use
This often a complicated case regarding competition law. In our neoliberal world giving away something for free that was subsidized is often seen as destroying market. The national CIO of Germany at one time recommended public bodies to us copyleft (also the EC opted for EPL) , rather than putting it into public domain. I also like this idea. However, this is fundamentaly different from the US. The German weather ser…
https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Urteil-Staatlicher-Wetterdiens...
They are planning to develop new tech which they might open source. But all this still has to be approved by the regulator and the government.
That said, I have seen some of the tech from the inside ~10 years ago. The ARD player was developed by a third party and there was no budget to bring this in house. Things might have changed but redoing everything just to open source it sounds like a waste of money.
public means public, if something is paid for by tax money, it should be licensed for public use
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are possibly illegal or at least against the law's spirit, which is ironic, because Heise is a relatively well respected publisher among German IT professionals.
I think they are legal because the requirement is that you have an option to "deny all" which they provide. That you must subscribe to the "Pur-Abo" to use this option doesn't matter.
public means public, if something is paid for by tax money, it should be licensed for public use
I was about to call that the Rundfunkbeitrag is not legally a tax (Steuer), but a tax (Beitrag). For some reason that difference does not seem to exist in English and it translates to the same word??