Comment by PurpleRamen
9 days ago
That's an interesstingly delusional take, considering Open Source would support the free market in this specific case.
> If you're afraid that one country might create a better software product/company and win the market and this would become 'unfair,' you've already lost the plot.
That's not how this market works. With government, many projects do not make the deal because they have the better offer or superiour product, but because the company is better at playing the administration, which usually comes down to "investing more money". Open Source and open standards can remove some of the leverages they use, enabling smaller companies to play on a bigger field, and thus improving the market overall.
And with the actual political situation in Europe, there is also the beneficial sideeffect that more players in the market, and less dependecy from single point of failures, will allow everyone to raise their survival-rate in case of hostile actions.
I'm confused with the disconnect here, so you simultaneously believe that:
- government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)
AND
- government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?
> - government decision making is corrupt/inefficient (they would not pick the best product, only the company that bribed them the most)
That's an strangly simple view. You think playing politics can only mean bribing them?
> government directly funding software development would not suffer from the same issues with government being corrupt/inefficient?
The public sector is not a single unified hivemind. There are multiple different levels of organisation which are each working togeher and fighting each other all at the same time. But a common problem for them all is, the less rules for them exist, the more likely they will make their own descisions.
You're talking past my criticism and haven't addressed the core logic flaw in your argument.
If government is competent enough to build its own software solutions (and these creations would be valuable enough that open sourcing them would create opportunities for startups in the private sector as you've claimed!)...then they are also competent enough to buy the correct software product from a European private company.
If they cannot be trusted to buy the right software for themselves without the process being corrupted, they sure as hell can't be trusted to BUILD that software from the ground up (a much harder task!).