Thread: Public money, public code - an FSFE action
View Single Post
juiceme is offline juiceme
2017-09-26 , 20:51
Community Council | Posts: 4,920 | Thanked: 12,867 times | Joined on May 2012 @ Southerrn Finland
#10
Originally Posted by pichlo View Post
Another thing. You seem to be conflating two things. A school, road, hospital etc are paid from public money therefore their use is in the public domain. That does not mean the blueprints for building those things should be public too.

Is there a counter-petition I can sign?
Well, I can tick off some points where it is a good idea to have public utilities order open source software. With no doubt you can counter these but if so, I'd like to hear your arguments
  • Avoiding vendor lock-in.
    This is IMHO one of the most compelling reasons to order public/national/communal systems as Open Source. You are free to engage with closed vendors as "partners" in enterprise world, but when something is to be used for a long time in public utility it is paramount that you don't give your balls in the squeeze of a single vendor.
  • Providing level competition ground for small businesses.
    Large-scale closed project attract large (US-based) SW houses like flies, there is huge money to be made. If the proceedings are to be Open Source, it will shun thesse vultures away and allow the job to be done by small businesses and consultants, providing local jobs and local taxable revenues. (You bet the internationals do all they can to hide all the money they can grab in tax-free paradises)
  • Enabling public scrutiny of used methods and algorithms.
    You might say that this is so often used argument it means nothing any longer, that nobody reads the source... which most probably is true for irrelevant fartapps but for large public utility software this is not true.
    For example when the finnish board of education created their currently used electronic exams system they also held a competition open for anybody to hack the system, with good prizes. And the system was updated in realtime when faults were found.
    All software has bugs but closed software will always have more dangerous bugs than open software.
 

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to juiceme For This Useful Post: