Michigan Governor Wants 'Open Source' Economic Model 237
An anonymous reader writes "Incoming Michigan governor Rick Synder spoke in Kalamazoo, MI today and says he wants to use an 'open-source economic development model' to help repair the battered down state. Perhaps during his time as president of Gateway he saw a benefit to the open source model, but can it really be successfully applied as an economic model?"
The Real Title: Kalamazoo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Real Title: Kalamazoo (Score:5, Insightful)
They plan to look at the way each region of the state does things, and implement the best plans. Kalamazoo happens to be one place that the governor feels is doing things right, and should serve as a template for other areas. But you are correct in that this is not really about "open source" government at all, which would allow anyone to contribute. This is about taking the best policies and procedures already out there, and using them in places that are not yet doing so.
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And in the intelligence community, "open source" means a publicly available source of information.
Since it's almost a requirement that you're an addle minded bozo to be accepted in politics, it's could be he has a number of meanings of the term wrapped up together.
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...But you are correct in that this is not really about "open source" government at all, which would allow anyone to contribute...
Isn't that democracy?
(or do you really want to debate it and get into the finer points of a representative republic?)
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Haha, I'm not one of those folks who prattle on about "It's not a democracy, it's a republic!" Yeah, uh, the states are democracies that democratically elect representatives to join the governing bodies of the republic.
Unfortunately, we do not allow just anyone to contribute. Try writing a bill and getting it before congress. But that really wasn't what I was talking about, most of government is not decided on by votes of any sort, it is set as policy. I think this story is more about governmental operation
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If you're a corporate lobbyist, getting a bill introduced is actually quite easy.
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I do! I do!
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And yuu don't want the common person having specific input. It goes badly because the people who show up are generally clueless and demand shit that's stupid, doesn't apply, or would cost far too much.
OR they will use 'common knowledge' to tell you what you shouldn't do.
I am not saying they should be out all together. example:
JQ Public wants a park? great. They want swing, grass and a soccer field, fine. The implementation and the details should be done by professionals. Cause I guarantee you that some jack
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No, let anyone have specific input, just as any old schmoe can contribute patches to an open source project. Make it as easy as possible for everyone, even the stupid people, to see how things are done and contribute ideas about how they could be done better. Just as with open source, the maintainer (i.e. the government official in charge) decides what gets committed and what gets thrown out. Sure, you would have to look over and toss out dozens of bad ideas for every good one, but I think it would be worth
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I think the plan needs to first address some more fundamental issues, such was: why anyone should take a place called fuckin' "Kalamazoo" seriously. That's such a joke name.
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I was born in Kalamazoo.
Used to have a t-shirt that said, "Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo."
And I don't know about Danes or Norwegians, but that's Dutch country down there in South-West Michigan.
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I thought the cat was named Kalamazoo...
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The Gibson guitar plant used to be there. There was also a company that made band saws for cutting metal parts.
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It was fictional to me until Playboy visited.
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What he means (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe what he means by "open source" economic model is that he wants state workers to work for free.
Re:What he means (Score:5, Informative)
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In all seriousness, though, the "open source development model" (not necessarily a Mozilla Foundation version of that, b
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I don't think the "open source development model" is the correct association to make with his statement "open source economic development".
The way I read it is more like recipe sharing. Whoever makes the best apple pie gets their recipe distributed throughout the state. I didn't read anything about mandates in the article, so it sounds like the local governments can take recipes and do with them as they see fit.
One would hope that efficiency would prevail, but I'm sure that some local governments will stu
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Why is the word "Socialism" so hard to say for some ?
Calling Open Source communist is false because people arent being forced into it, they have a choice, it is reasonable call it socialist though.
Socialism is all about sharing, society has been "into it" for a long time, its not a dirty word, its not something to be ashamed of.
Communism is when society tries to FORCE its people to share, it doesn't work, its too inefficient.
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"Applying best practices around the state is not about getting credit but rather uplifting the state for all, Snyder said.
So he wont mention anything about this initiative when he runs for reelection?
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Maybe what he means by "open source" economic model is that he wants state workers to work for free.
Time for them for fork and start their own state.
Re:What he means (Score:4, Funny)
Or give the cars away for free but charge for service :)
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Or give the cars away for free but charge for service :)
Last time I tried that they threw the DMCA at me, so I had to go back to selling cars and charging for non-existent service.
Re:What he means (Score:4, Informative)
I've mentioned this before
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1377061&cid=29499823 [slashdot.org]
But I've seen the phrase "open source" used all over the place by non-tech people
Particularly when they want to express the idea of a transparent process, one that's open (to debate and democratic reform)
I was hoping for an "open government" model (Score:2)
The taxpayers might be able to help out if they can see exactly where their money is being pissed away.
He's actually repackaging "republican" ideas (Score:2)
"Snyder mentioned a concept called "open-source economic development." He said the state is going to look at every region and see which area is the best at a certain practice and ask if the community is willing to share it with the rest of the state."
More accurately he is just repackaging *traditional* republican arguments (which may or may not resemble some contemporary republicans). Basically the idea is that rather than have some central authority decide upon a soluti
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This has nothing to do with Open Source. It is about using the best practices found and implementing them. The real problem with government is a lack of good metrics to measure performance. If you measure it then you know what works and what doesn't and you use what works.
But on the flip side you get a bunch of whiny pants who wants to keep the bad way of doing things and state that the metrics are not good.
This is about measuring performance in particular areas and using what works better as a best pract
It's already "open source" (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is the open source license being used. Lots of government bodies use a license similar to the BSD license where "taking without giving back" is perfectly acceptable which is what big business does most of the time.
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Define "Open Source" (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, we can have a lot of pointless dickering about whether the term "Open Source" is being abused. But more importantly, those ideas in themselves sound fine to me. I doubt they'll be enough to solve Michigan's huge problems, but that's another matter.
Re:Define "Open Source" (Score:4, Interesting)
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It is. Best practices != software, and if he actually means copying coftware solutions you can bet most of it is closed source they'll have to buy more licenses for.
P.S. Most of the time ,this means standardizing on the already most dominant solution. The odds of him throwing out something 90% use for something 10% use is minimal.
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What strikes me as odd is that he wants to ask if the community is willi
Here's my model (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's my model (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Spend what ever you feel like, income is a different department anyhow so its their problem.
2. When cutting spending, cut which ever program will cause the most news (good or bad).
3. Borrow more from another source and use it to pay as much as you are required to on existing debts. Excess borrowed funds can be used for what ever (see point 1).
4. Dont round any figure, just add or remove zeros. After all, zeros are nothing!
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I'm fairly certain you are infringing on the model used by many powerful businesses that patent such models. I hope you like being a revenue source.
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Because its open source, I'm going to make the following changes to your model and submit it.
Thank you for your submission. After due consideration by the committee, the changes you submitted will not be committed to main_street(). If you wish to make another submission you may want to base it on the most recent code from the current branch - code follows:
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In a deal hammered out by the state's Democratic leadership, the lame-duck legislature pushed through a 67% increase in the state income tax and a 45% increase in the corporate tax....
I'm tired of seeing numbers presented like this. Semi-related XKCD: http://xkcd.com/558/ [xkcd.com]
From the same article, the real numbers are: income-tax rate from 3% to 5%, corporate tax from 4.8% to 7%.
I'm not saying the tax increase was a good idea. I'm not saying it's not burdensome. I'm just saying that the phrase '67% increase' is intended to incite anger without understanding, while 'from 3% to 5%' is intended to inform.
A few years ago my state was having gubernatorial elections, and the challeng
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That all sounds really familiar.
I'm going to change #2
2. Never actually cut spending. Less than expected increases in the budget shall be called "cuts". When "cutting" spending, "cut" which ever program will cause the most news (good or bad).
Re:Here's my model (Score:5, Insightful)
But what if borrowing leads to more growth that pays off the debt? What if cutting spending in a depression lowers economic activity and therefore tax revenues? What if interest rates are low enough to make it non-sensical to pay more than the bare minimum?
Your model may work for a household, but not a government.
Re:Here's my model (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea that government spending creates "growth" is, at best, arguable. It can be used to maybe prevent a further slide (ie: temporarily paying unemployment when there are mass layoff, so those people have money to eat on, so rent is paid, food is bought, etc.) Government spending is a patch, it isn't an investment plan. Notable exceptions would be in infrastructure and other items that the people can't themselves provide, but even then, too much is too much and the payback time for infrastructure is typically measured in years if not decades.
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The idea that government spending creates "growth" is, at best, arguable... Notable exceptions would be in infrastructure and other items that the people can't themselves provide...
Then the proposition is not "at best arguable", you actually state that it's true. The only thing you're quibbling over is the price tag. Say what you mean, dude...
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The idea that government spending creates "growth" is, at best, arguable.
I think you're correct, and are pointing out a common mis-conception. A government can't reasonably directly create economic growth, but it can provide an infrastructure and context that promotes private economic investment and growth, and doing so is not usually without cost. The government spending does not directly create growth, but without the necessary contextual factors growth will not happen.
Now, with that said, you are also correct that the proper amount of spending and on what services and infrast
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Well, for the past 7 years, I've been gainfully employed in a private biotech company. The core technology was developed in a university setting under the funding of government research grants.
In this case, government spending has clearly led to economic opportunities. In fact, considering that a huge portion of fundamentally new technology comes from academic research, and that emerging technologies on the market can create huge
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Generally, I agree.
But when should you invest extra in infrastructure? During a recession.
Because:
- The price is lower than normal (even factoring interest on borrowing, labor and equipment are idle and should therefore be cheaper than normal)
- It's better to pay salaries of construction workers than pay them unemployment for not working
- Whatever stimulative benefits you may or may not get
When the government is rich tends to be when the economy is booming and infrastructure projects
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When the government spends on infrastructure, education, and science, it doesn't actually generate growth. Not real growth. I mean, sure, you can pay someone to dig ditches, and that's cash-in-hand and GDP and whatnot. These things do that, for sure. They put much needed cash where it's needed. But what they do is ALLOW for growth. No one is going to drive on a bridge to nowhere, and you can't teach calculus to a gorilla. IF, and only if, you have people that CAN learn a th
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When does government spend on religion?
Churches are tax free. That's essentially a subsidy.
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When does government spend on religion?
As someone pointed, out, Churches are non-profit and exempt from most taxes, including local and state taxes in some places, property taxes, sales taxes (again, those depend on the state) and Bush managed to include religious organizations into federal funding as non-profits. Also, when you give money to a church, it is tax deductible, making it a subsidy as well.
Honestly, many churches do great work, and use the money better than any government agency would. Most ar
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It's dangerous to think that spending just for the sake of spending will spur economic activity. Economic activity is only really worthwhile if it produces tangible goods and services with real benefits. Hap-hazard spending will produce the same economic numbers in the short term, but over time it will become ineffective because it failed to produce anything or real value. In the end, you'll be worse off than you were at the beginning because of all the resources that you wasted, worse still if you accum
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The same fundamentals apply: Don't spend what you don't have unless you have a really good reason. Politicians like to do a lot of hand waving to justify their bad behavior. Ideally they'd be honest and say "look, we can't do that because we can't afford to" when that's the case. But it's a lot easier to just say "yes we can" and let the next guy deal with it.
The federal government is completely out of control, and for all their deficit spending, they have not made a case that there will be any real ret
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Oh, yeah, all that government spending. The bailouts, the 1% during Greenspan and then 0% during Bernanke interest rates, the stimulus packages, the buying out of various private businesses, buying out bad mortgage loans, insuring mortgage loans with no collateral, with no downpayment, giving out all sorts of free money, sure sure, that'll generate economic activity.
If by activity you mean: people will buy more stuff they didn't produce with the given/borrowed money - you are right.
If by activity you mean:
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5. If the choice is between services not essential to physical survival of the public, and raising taxes, shitcan the services.
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Real simple, right? Except, you get voted out of office for cutting services *or* raising taxes, or running on a platform of doing either. That's the rub. People want services, but have a naive disassociation with their tax revenue and funding their government.
Plenty of politicians love to talk in vagaries about how they'll do one or the other, but no one has the courage to campaign that way.
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Social Security isn't really a service. And it's our biggest expense. Let's cut it.
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The so called "social security trust fund" has already been raided with sneaky accounting in the form of government bonds.
It's already bankrupt because it's holding worthless IOUs from Uncle Sam.
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Yeah, so if you eliminate it, you'll eliminate a large portion of the national debt. It's a win-win.
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You can't just make debt go poof. The money is already gone and we're already in the hole.
Stopping it wouldn't take care of the IOUs that are already outstanding.
The US would have to go bankrupt against its own citizens to pull that off.
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Imagine you take out a loan with a loan-shark. One day he tells you that he'll break your legs if you don't pay him back. But you can't pay him back, so you kill him instead. Who will come back to collect? He was the one with a financial interest in the loan.
It works the same way with social security. Only the program has a financial interest in the debt, cancel it and you no longer need to it back. Of course, there are people depending on social security money for their retirement/whatever, so you'd
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I never received a dime from them, how am I supposed to pay back some kind of "dept" that I "owe" them? The money's not there, and moving forward it will continue to be less and less there. We need to find a better way to take care of our overweight diabetic Vietnam vets.
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Here's my model:
Here's the reality:
Spend as much as you can. People love it when you spend on new programs.
When the stupid people want you to cut spending cut to police and fire first so they will think twice about asking for cuts the next time.
Pay down debts?! Debts show your development! Every successful government is in debt. The more debt the more successful!
Always underestimate the cost of programs to make them look appealing, then overestimate the revenues from anything you do! It makes you look good!
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2.When cutting spending, try cutting big ticket items first.
The big ticket items in your state budget are the ones that care for the poorest and most vulnerable. The very young and the very old. The sick and the disabled.
The geek keeps his toll free commuter bridge.
The middle class entitlement that costs next to nothing in the larger scheme of things.
Grandma loses her senior van, dental clinic and home care services.
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The big ticket items in your state budget are the ones that care for the poorest and most vulnerable.
Like the two cell phones that Social Services gave my worthless sister, who would (literally) not work in a pie factory, for being one welfare. Now she can sit in her government paid for apartment and make calls for 250hrs a month without worrying about a bill. It was attached to the Food Stamps program in North Carolina, btw. The government likes to wrap all of those programs up into one big bag so that parts are hard to throw out.
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How did you get modded insightful? I mean, granted your model is technically correct, but everyone already knows it and there's no real insight there. Spend less than you take in? Great, so to meet that goal I need to spend less or take in more. So how should they do that? Cut budgets? Well duh, but which ones do you cut? Everything you cut has a downside, and often the big ticket ones are the ones that really can't afford to be cut because they are too valuable and already underfunded. So take in more? Well, increasing taxes has a downside too.
I doubt you're at risk of being modded insightful. Most budgets that are in trouble are so because it's hard to cut stuff (well, duh, right?). As it turns out, all the big ticket US budget items can be cut. For example, the top three are Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and Defense. Only defense qualifies as "can't afford to eliminate", but it still can be cut a lot. My view is that the only US service that we can't afford to cut is interest payments to parties outside of the US government. It seems reas
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Eliminate? Wow.
If it comes to survival of the US, or grannie eating catfood, I'm sure we can come up with a government some other time. And the "sucks to be you" health care system gets implemented every time a society falls apart. But having said that, I don't see any reason that we can't have some degree of meaningless "social security" combined with a balanced budget. I said that not just to indicate my opinion of the value of Social Security, but also my willingness to make sacrifices in order to get a balanced budget
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Considering that deception and obfuscation are profitable for the people in a position to prohibit it...yeah, I'll wait till I see a pig fly.
RMS Is in Control Now (Score:5, Funny)
After cracking a very strange grin, RMS promised the people they would experience open source in new and profound ways starting today.
Not Open Source, but Constitutional Model (Score:3, Informative)
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and did that 'constitutional' model help ANY of the bullshit we have experienced in the last decade ?
Why do you think the answer is anything but yes? A nation ruled by law rather than the whims of men has long been shown to be more effective in the long run.
despite the distribution of income has become worse than the disparage in between medieval serf, and baron in middle ages. (33% serf, 33% church, 33% lord).
How many barons do you think there were? I doubt landed nobility (land was the way to earn great amounts of money back then) even made up 1% of the entire population. Yet your link above shows modern rich making roughly 20% of all income in the US.
Perhaps constitutional model not being followed (Score:2)
and did that 'constitutional' model help ANY of the bullshit we have experienced in the last decade ?
Perhaps the problem was that the constitutional model was not being followed.
Already has 300+ years of development (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called the "free market." Michigan should try it.
Re:Already has 300+ years of development (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they did, and the market sent all their jobs to the third world.
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I think they did, and the market sent all their jobs to the third world.
The problem with a market is that if you aren't willing to meet a counterparty at an agreed on price, then no transaction occurs. In the case of Michigan, they simply priced themselves out of the labor and industry markets by imposing too many conditions on businesses.
Re:Already has 300+ years of development (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, like labor and environmental protections. The problem isn't that Michigan priced themselves out of business, it's that places like China treat people like shit and crack down on people who oppose such abuses. Logically, the only way to compete with China would be to reduce costs down to being just under China costs + shipping.
Of course, I doubt many people in the US would be willing to accept such a drop in quality of life, or accept such corporate abuse.
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Of course, I doubt many people in the US would be willing to accept such a drop in quality of life, or accept such corporate abuse.
That's ok, it doesn't need to be voluntary. Many people in the US are getting that drop in quality of life, whether they chose to accept it or not.
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Of course, I doubt many people in the US would be willing to accept such a drop in quality of life, or accept such corporate abuse.
I don't think you've been watching the same country I have. Since I was little, I've watched a corporate chain systematically replace nearly every independent business, to the detriment of the local environment, to the standard of living of the local populace, and even to the continued success, education, and care of children.
We now live on Planet Starbucks, just as Thomas Jefferson predicted. It's the inevitable course when our economy is based on the Federal Reserve and debt slavery. You know Andrew Ja
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Utterly and completely B.S.!! I am so sick of you race to the bottom folks...
You need to hold China and other such nations accountable for their records on human rights, SoL, etc... not pander to them. Sad that so many are so willing to return to serfdom on some supposed principled decision to follow the "free market".
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So, basically you are saying they should lower their expectations to the level found in, for instance, China, then they can get back into the labor and industry markets ?
Yes, that is one way to do it which beats what Michigan is currently doing. There are other ways to make the state a place to work and do business again without turning it into a Chinese copy.
You know, there are many countries in the world which impose many conditions on businesses, yet they have labor and industry markets.
Even Michigan has a labor and industry market. But nobody sane would think of starting an industrial business there. And isolationism is rife throughout the world.
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Free market - this is an interesting term.
'Free' implies no imposition of order or expectations, but 'Market' connotes an establishment of certain expectations, such as equitable trading, enforced obligations, peace, security, and probably a negotiable instrument as a means of exchange. 'Market' doesn't exist without agreed upon regulation and an external entity to enforce said regulation.
So, a market can only be free up to a certain point before it ceases to be a market and instead becomes looting and anar
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'Market' connotes an establishment of certain expectations, such as equitable trading, enforced obligations, peace, security, and probably a negotiable instrument as a means of exchange. 'Market' doesn't exist without agreed upon regulation and an external entity to enforce said regulation.
Nonsense! Trading doesn't have to be equitable for it to take place. Black marketplaces exist everywhere outside of any established regulation, but yet we still have a market place if exchange takes place. It's nice if obligations are enforced, but not necessary. All the homes in foreclosure show that aspect of it, yet it is still possible to get a house.
All of those items are desirable, but by no means are they necessary by any definition of a market. A market is simply when you have two entities tra
Eh. (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, the basically irrelevant Michigan thing aside, we actually know reasonably well where OSS works and where it doesn't. We can even get a pretty decent idea of which flavors of "open source" will crop up in which areas.
First, of course, the unit cost of reproduction has to be negligible. Second, and related to the first, free riders must not be a serious issue(this doesn't mean that they have to not exist, and they generally do; but it means that they have to cost little or nothing, and something must motivate some percentage of users not to free-ride). If the first doesn't hold, the second generally has a hard time holding. If the first does hold, the second can still fail to hold; but in successful OSS scenarios it does hold.
You have the GPL, and its close associates: tends to apply to software, occasionally to texts, schematics, etc., things where #1 definitely holds. #2's applicability is provided by a mixture of ideological altruists and the fact that 'share-alike' is legally prescribed. While it was designed with ideological purposes in mind, this gives it unexpected utility for the production of what are, essentially, informal development consortia.
LGPL, and similar, fall between GPL and BSD. Typically applied to the same class as GPL and BSD; but derives its resistance to free riders more from economics than from ideologues of either camp.
BSD and similar tend to apply to the same class of things as GPL, for reasons of #1; but obtain contributions from potential free-riders much more heavily from (a sometimes vehemently different set of) ideological actors.
CC:Noncommercial, and similar, tend to apply to non-capital-intensive cultural objects. People are typically willing to share these with other people(and, pragmatically, recognize that other people are unlikely to pay enough to be worth collecting for them); but are suspicious of, and unwilling to allow, their appropriation by commercial interests(who both rub people the wrong way emotionally, and are recognized as having a much higher willingness to pay).
Surprised (Score:2)
they actually did. (Score:3, Insightful)
40% or so of them are hopeless. so brainwas
it would be nice to see government funded software (Score:2)
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I believe that all software produced by the US government has no copyright protection in the USA and is effectively public domain. This doesn't apply to the work of contractors though.
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I wonder if anyone has asked their local government office for copies of some of their software and what the response has been? My guess is that they're told it can't be released due to public safety concerns.
LoB
Reality Check (Score:2)
Open source is a fine notion in many things. However we are seeing our government looking like a deer frozen in the headlights with no clue of which way to turn. One reality is that we can never hope to have labor compete with foreign labor. There are so many workers in nations like China that labor simply can not get paid the way Americans do. We also now have huge problems in competing with designs and technologies from several nations. A general lack of education is hurting America bad. We also c
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But "open source" is a cool buzzword. He has to use it to look hip.
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No, the phrase isn't cool (sadly). He ran as "One tough nerd." Therefore, he's keeping in character by making a software reference.
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Real open source would be making it a right to work state and getting rid of union control. Real open source would be to get rid of the government control and let people figure things out. What he seems to be proposing is nothing more than leveraging best practices.
There is not enough information in the article to know what all he means by the phrase. However, do not be so sure that he will not attempt to make Michigan a right to work state.