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France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

social.numerique.gouv.fr

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Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#121

Post by bambax »

Bayart wrote: post #116
idoubtit wrote: post #34

This is just for show, and facts won't follow. It's not the first time a French government vows to stick to Open Source. Yet most of the public money goes to proprietary software, and Open Source is the exception. Two months ago, the French government signed an "open bar" contract with Microsoft for the "Éducation Nationale" department. 152 M€, not for Open Source. Source (fr) https://www.april.org/nouvel-open-bar-mi…

I'm extremely tired of this attitude among French people that amounts to systematically shoot down any attempt at improvement with cynicism.

It doesn't come from nowhere, though. It results in having had to tolerate the French bureaucracy, French lies, empty promises, and French way of (not) doing things for decades.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#122

Post by pauletienney »

jraph wrote: post #118
pauletienney wrote: post #112

As an illustration of it: I have been working for two years on a new national project for the french state. Le Référentiel National des Bâtiments (for National Buildings Registry) which aim at creating and distributing a id key to every building in the country. The goal is to make databases about buildings much more interoperable. One key aspect is to have a precise list of all buildings includings recent constructio…

Nice! Since OSM is, among other things, a list of building, will there be exchanges between the two projects? Are the licenses of the two projects compatible?

Well, we have some connections with the community and we are discussing how to incorporate our buildings IDs in OSM. The other way around (OSM to national registry) seems more complicated for license reasons.

Last summer we tested the open approch by doing a "RNB Summer game". Basically, anyone could come on the map and send some error reporting, we had a score per player, per territory and a shared global score. The OSM community absolutely rolled ont the game :)

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#123

Post by StefanBatory »

hx8 wrote: post #58
twodave wrote: post #31

As an American, this sort of brings back into question for me thoughts of, "What should constitute a public utility in a Capitalism society?" Upon doing some cursory research (so cursory that I'm afraid to provide links), it occurs to me that I was maybe under a false impression that there _are_ any nationwide public utilities in the first place. We basically have: * The Federal Reserve * The Interstate Highway Syste…

Federal Aviation Administration keeps the skies a public utility. Federal Communication Commission keeps part of the wireless communication spectrum open to the public. National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management keeps some public land available for everyone to use. The Library of Congress. National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service probably satisfy "Public Utility" as much as Medicaid. Federal Eme…

But I think that's the issue -

for libertarian,

National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service probably satisfy "Public Utility" as much as Medicaid.

this would not be public utility, etc.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#124

Post by keepamovin »

Software is sort of like real estate. It costs to maintain otherwise depreciated in value so you must be judicious with your investments. Unlike real property there’s not such a resale market, so you probably must be even more judicious.

It’s quite a thing for anyone to commit to software maintenance. The idea of open source that there will always be volunteers that reduce the fees you pay for maintenance is not a certainty.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#125

Post by keepamovin »

Software is sort of like real estate. It costs to maintain otherwise depreciates in value so you must be judicious with your investments. Unlike real property there’s not such a resale market, so you probably must be even more judicious.

It’s quite a thing for anyone to commit to software maintenance. The idea of open source that there will always be volunteers that reduce the fees you pay for maintenance is not a certainty.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#126

Post by orwin »

leesalminen wrote: post #43
fdefitte wrote: post #19

France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with great tools such as France Connect that allows a single login method for any administrative tool.

Like distributing an iOS app in France that uses encryption? What a pain in the ass that is. The bureaucracy was painful enough that we just removed from the French App Store and when someone complains we tell them to write their representatives to stop with these misguided laws. Excuse me, monsieur, do you have a license for that math?

You can't sell encryption in France if you haven't proved it actually is strong encryption and not a rot13 or something, which is actually a _very_ good idea.

Could the implementation be better? Knowing french admin, 100% yes, but complaining about the law itself is, in my opinion, misguided. This is an overall good law that doesn't came from nowhere.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#127

Post by bambax »

fdefitte wrote: post #19

France has an undeserved bad reputation for this stuff. As a french citizen, I'm amazed to see how easy it has become to do anything administrative online, with great tools such as France Connect that allows a single login method for any administrative tool.

Most things don't work, and "France Connect" is really bad (it doesn't even accept non-ascii letters for your name or surname! which is insane coming from an official initiative of the French Government; they should at least know how to use the French language). Anything from the department of education is also abysmal, mostly broken, and needlessly convoluted.

The one amazing thing that works is the taxes collection system. The French tax code is incredibly complex with hundred of special cases; yet the online system to declare revenues is perfect: super clear to use with excellent instructions, never broken (even at the end of a period where usage peaks must be insane) and with no errors.

I don't know who constructed this but it's proof that the French gvt can make good software when they really care (ie, when money's at stake).

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#128

Post by zorked »

dgfitz wrote: post #81
hx8 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> differentiate dictatorships from democracies At first glance I thought this was hyperbole, but after reflection I'm not sure it's even an exaggeration. Too much critical infrastructure of power (voting, census, taxation, reporting, compliance) runs of software for us to accept anything less than full transparency from our governments.

There’s always holes. How can we know for sure the binaries running on the voting machines are compiled from the open source repo? It’s turtles all the way down.

In Brazil there is black box testing. Party officials can choose a sample of a few ballots per polling location on election day, where a simulated election is run, with all inputs recorded on video. The machines have to tally the right votes for the input given at the end of day. These are machines that would be used for voting, and the party officials are parties unrelated to (and in a way, antagonistic with) the voting authority.

I think it's a pretty solid scheme.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#129

Post by agumonkey »

pauletienney wrote: post #112

As an illustration of it: I have been working for two years on a new national project for the french state. Le Référentiel National des Bâtiments (for National Buildings Registry) which aim at creating and distributing a id key to every building in the country. The goal is to make databases about buildings much more interoperable. One key aspect is to have a precise list of all buildings includings recent constructio…

Very interesting news. Is there an official portal where we can follow this project or similar efforts ?

Good luck (and thanks)

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#130

Post by agumonkey »

idoubtit wrote: post #34

This is just for show, and facts won't follow. It's not the first time a French government vows to stick to Open Source. Yet most of the public money goes to proprietary software, and Open Source is the exception. Two months ago, the French government signed an "open bar" contract with Microsoft for the "Éducation Nationale" department. 152 M€, not for Open Source. Source (fr) https://www.april.org/nouvel-open-bar-mi…

There's a slight increase in open source efforts. They recently released a react component framework for govt apps. They use keycloak very often.
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