Geeklawyer thinks that getting someone to pay big bucks twice for the same thing is a pretty neat trick; he’s only ever managed it once. When it’s the government doing it to him however he is a little more outraged. For example trying making him pay a second time to get access to statutes, or Ordnance Survey mapping data for which he already paid via his taxes.
Now a petition is up asking for government sourced taxpayer paid for software to be Free/Open source Software. The broad principle Geeklawyer thought to be right so he signed. The devil is, of course, in the detail: how does one treat the work of private companies, should non UK residents get the benefit of our taxes for free etc. These issues need to be looked at hard, perhaps taking influence from the BBC’s Creative Commons inspired license the Creative Archive License.
Signing the petition may encourage the government to think. Yea, it’s long shot …
Well, in my country (Argentina), one province and several cities can only use free software for public administration. I personally wrote an ordinance proposal to extend that to my own city. I don’t mind sharing my taxes with you, and if all countries opensourced their software, its quality would improve worldwide.
Not just Argentina but Brazil. I agree it would be nice if everyone were altruistic, and the FLOSS world shows things can potentially work well when they do. But governments …
It’s somewhat rare for students to enjoy their jobs in college. I know my first internship in college showed me that I didn’t want to work in that industry.
Sometimes just working at the school cafeteria can be the perfect fit for a student. It beats filing papers all day in a cubicle, and you usually get some free food!