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> As yet, none of the big players appears to have lost significant business to the free software movement in Germany. But it seems likely that commercial vendors will have a tougher time here in the near future. Free software and open source doesn't mean non-commercial. SUSE in Germany provides commercial support to their distro for example. Such a weird article, zdnet doesn't getting any better...
There is another interesting section in the document[1]. The city introduces the "Munich Open Source Sabatical". The city will pay professional programmers for 3 till 6 months to work on open source projects that benefit the community. > Die Stadt München unterstützt die Entwicklung von Open Source-Projekten mit einem "Munich Open Source Sabbatical". Professionelle Programmierer*innen, die sich für drei oder sechs Mo…
Interesting. How much will they pay them, though?
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Interesting. How much will they pay them, though?
The document doesn’t say how much. I guess, it’s just an umbrella document. More detailed regulations will be eventually adopted. That said, my estimate would be 500€ max per month.
it would have to something that covers your current living expenses, no matter how high they are, because unless you are young and single with a lot of flexibility, you are not going to be able to put a hold on all those expenses.
therefore the two reasonable options are: the government continues to pay your current salary, or it pays what you'd get if they'd hire you. the latter would disadvantage high earners, but that is somewhat reasonable.
anything less would unlikely get any people interested.
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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…
the buyer can not shift the risk to the seller. how would that go? put out a tender for a completed solution and then wait until someone builds the software on their own risk, hoping to win the tender? that's like a designer competition, and those have been considered unfair.
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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…
if the software already exists, then it's not a risk question, but one of cost. the buyer can not shift the risk to the seller. how would that go? put out a tender for a completed solution and then wait until someone builds the software on their own risk, hoping to win the tender? that's like a designer competition, and those have been considered unfair.
If the cities built it themselves, they would not be able to choose who to buy from. And if their self-built software sucks, they've wasted money and have a shitty software. One that they may not be able to replace, because there's no longer a market for that kind of software. Public endeavors into building things (airports, train stations, rapid train lines etc) in the recent decades in Germany does not predict a bright future for these kinds of things.
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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 ar…
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if the software already exists, then it's not a risk question, but one of cost. the buyer can not shift the risk to the seller. how would that go? put out a tender for a completed solution and then wait until someone builds the software on their own risk, hoping to win the tender? that's like a designer competition, and those have been considered unfair.
Software doesn't just "exist", it's created. And spending time and/or money on creating means taking on the risk to fail. Again, they're not putting out contracts for bidding for every software they want, just like most enterprise software isn't custom made. They buy lots of software from companies. Those companies have competitors, so cities can choose which software to buy. Those companies shoulder the risk of not…
of course software is created. but the risk a company takes in creating is irrelevant to the decision a government makes. that risk is from the past.
you said that the government can either choose to take a risk by developing their own, or offload that risk.
but that is not the decision it needs to make. when it takes an existing product it is not offloading that risk, because the risk that vendor took is independent of the risk of the government.
the situation should be rather like this: either a solution exists, then we use that solution with a small or no risk because the vendor already took that risk in the past. or the solution doesn't exist, then we don't have a choice but to custom develop with all the risks that that includes.
at no point is there an option to offload an existing risk.
the only way to offload an existing risk would be to say: we wait until vendors come up with solutions.
(it may be that i am getting hung up on little details here. i believe that we are actually mostly in agreement in how a government is handling custom development)
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I'm not working for Palantir, what we work on is linked to one of: - capacity planning for renewables (hydro power) - streamlining mass transit - large scale collection and recycling of bottles - search and rescue operations in the North Sea - education as for why the NDA, my best guess is because "they could". Someone should tell them they are losing out on some great publisity and goodwill.
is the code already public? or will it be published when it's done?
Which is why I think the NDA (or my reading of it) is way too wide.
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is the code already public? or will it be published when it's done?
It is already public. Which is why I think the NDA (or my reading of it) is way too wide.