this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
471 points (95.7% liked)
Technology
59223 readers
2951 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Which then raises the question: why isn't the US using open source software everywhere, paying the same -or very likely - much less to maintain and expand said software? Can you imagine the money stream towards thousands of devs fixing any (but, feature or security) issue, which they would already do for free? Finally some recognition and so on.
Finally they'd have software that they can trust and rely upon, it'll kill one huge company and spawn hundreds of smaller companies. Win-win all around
If its anything like the private sector its a mostly a liability thing. If something is wrong with the program, you can sue the vendor. With open source... Thats a lot harder to do. Large groups wont use the thing if you cant put the blame on someone else when it breaks.
Because open source doesn't have support contracts
Really? Maybe ask redhat? Ubintu? And those are the large ones, there are loads of companies that give support contracts.
I'm sure there are other companies, but here's Red Hat's Support options.
Because there is seldom a good replacement for the majority of software that enterprises use.
As much as I like FOSS it's significantly harder to fund.
With proprietary you keep the source code, ship the app, collect data & sell it, and charge for a premium /subscription. They then use that money to fund talented devs and give them deadlines to make good software.
With FOSS it's largely contribution work by people who work on it in their free time. They use donations or paying for enterprise support, and if they do add a subscription service / premium version you can just modify the code and get it for free.
That's largely why FOSS software is behind, what's the direct incentive for someone to make it good?
An administration that were really looking to liberate itself of proprietary software and develop a sustainable policy would analyze its needs and look for software that matches them, not shape their needs around the proprietary software they're already using.
If you start by thinking "what software does things exactly the same as this one I'm using" of course you'll never move on. Microsoft obfuscates their software on purpose so you can never find 100% compatible stuff.
You're living in a fantasy land. The software you're referencing, largely doesn't exist how a corporate environment utilizes it. Even just excel, the employees need it, you can't teach someone 5 years from retirement a new spreadsheet program. Sure you could buy licenses from MS, but I bet if big organizations started doing it, they would stop. Or only sell the entire MS suite at some insane price. Adobe? Haha