[renewiltord]

Government organizations are terrified about open source initiatives. There's something strange about it.

You could volunteer to do all the work and they'll still oppose you at every turn.

My hope is that we'll reach a stage where citizen participatory programming is normal for all. Where my dad could offer a PR to fix a typo on a government page casually as he browses it.

I have a feeling we're not far off but you need it to happen in a place with low entrenched interests but with sufficient enlightenment.

I think big US cities have the latter but not the former, and authoritarian developing nations lack both the former and the latter. So maybe smaller Western nations like Estonia.

Or, my biggest hope, sufficiently advanced townships in America.

[callesgg]

It is hard to blame other people when you are the only one to blame. When you decide to use a open source project it is your fault if it fails not the open source project, it often says so in the licensing.

While that is always true in reality(you are always responsible for your actions), it is not legally obvious when you buy commercial products(you can blame the manufacturer).

While people are often reluctant to accept that. I find that it is often what people’s arguments in this regards can be boiled down to.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

I don't understand this argument at all. Unless you interpret the disclaimer as "you are not allowed to contract support from a third party", in which case you need to fire your legal department.

I suspect the argument usually comes in the form of FUD from consultants like the ones in charge of this project. But I wonder what makes it takes hold. Incompetent lawyers? Bureaucrats who like to play armchair lawyers? Or just outright corruption?

[progre]

I don't know, when our libraries procured new state wide library software (each city had it's own before) they went with Koha (open source). This means that they are not really paying for development, only installation integrations and support. This opened up the bidding to much smaller players and was much cheaper over all.

[renewiltord]

Where was that? I am thrilled to hear it and eager to learn what factors made that possible.

[progre]

This was for the libraries in the "between the lakes" region in Sweden (it was not for the "state"-level, I missremebered). Here is a link (swedish) https://kohasverige.se/nyheter

[renewiltord]

Thank you!

[alkonaut]

It’s still “no one got fired for buying IBM” at play.

I can see why you’d be defensive and make a project together with the firm that is the biggest player in software for the public sector (although their reputation is poor).

What I don’t understand is why the project is a Big Bang release type thing. Or why the contract can’t have clauses about openness or interoperability? If the supplier is scared by that or charges more for it - switch. Having source visible or exposed APIs doesn’t mean they have to accept PRs (although that would be great PR)

[raverbashing]

Yeah I think it's about time we start firing people who go for the big contractors and the big-bang projects

[say_it_as_it_is]

Seems like a good data journalism project. Follow the money.