[kenjackson]

The biggest con is IMO the most obvious one. What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on?

And are companies going really source local maintainers for FOSS versus the standard maintainer? Eg, is Switzerland really not going to use Canonical for supporting Ubuntu because it is British?

[jraph]

> What if a third party non-open source product does something that FOSS can’t do or is dramatically behind on?

That's almost the best side effect: in a place where open source is mandatory, they will have to fund the missing features and it will be available to everyone, once and for all. If everyone does that, we rapidly get great software, sharing the costs, very efficiently, and it's all open source.

The alternative being everyone paying their own little license on their side ad vitam eternam.

[jamil7]

In theory, maybe. I think in practise, in the case of somewhere like Germany, they realistically just won't implement the hypothetical feature and let productivity of employees drop even further. There is no motivation or reward in the public sector here for anyone to do anything better or more efficiently. I'm maybe overly cynical about the public sector's ability to get anything done here, I would like to be proven wrong, though.

[binary132]

It seems like maybe you’re assuming that state employees would be the ones building the required features, but I would guess these are simply going to be makework contracts going to (hopefully) local engineering firms.

[kenjackson]

No. I’m not assuming that. I assume the governments will have to fund the work, but they will contract it out. But even then governments have struggled to deliver on this.

And even when governments have the funding they tend to be horrible at specifying and getting delivery of technology - at least that’s been the case for the US.

[acdha]

> And even when governments have the funding they tend to be horrible at specifying and getting delivery of technology - at least that’s been the case for the US.

This is the dysfunctional contracting model combined with “cost savings” removing technical civil service positions, meaning that the government often lacks people who are qualified to review or manage contractors. Groups like the US digital service, 18F, etc. which have staff have much better track records.

[freetanga]

Funny. I thought “ok, yet another generation of Accenture/TCS/Fujitsu large scale government projects that cost billions and fail to deliver a single thing”

[jamil7]

But look! A clickable prototype!

[justin66]

> in a place where open source is mandatory, they will have to fund the missing features and it will be available to everyone, once and for all

Or the majority of their users will suffer with substandard products, while highly paid or influential users will get exceptions to the policy so they can use the software they want.

[jraph]

How is it relevant to open source? Today, users already suffer with whatever substandard product was chosen and enforced. Except it's also probably proprietary.

[kenjackson]

This idea works for well funded open source projects - typically funded by Big Tech. But for a given country to do this it seems more likely the functionality is just missed until Big Tech decides they need it.

For example let’s take apiece if software everyone on HN hates, Sharepoint. I’ve yet to find any open source alternative that comes close. And while you may hate it, it provides tons of value to local governments I’ve worked with.

[jraph]

Many well funded open source projects are not Big Tech. And entities (public or otherwise) do sponsor features in open source software.

I work on one of these projects.

[InitialLastName]

Reading the blog linked in TFA, in this case the requirement applies just to software developed by the Swiss government (or on their behalf by a contractor), not to all software in general.

[iforgotpassword]

I don't see this as a problem, at least not more than it already is even with proprietary software. Remember that announcement from just a few years ago that Japan will finally move away from using floppy disks as the official way to exchange data with some authorities? Or stories about government offices somewhere struggling to move away from windows 7?

I really don't see how it even still matters today. Even a Libre office from 5 years ago should have plenty features for the average tasks an office clerk needs to do. Heck probably even MS Word 97 would suffice. The rest is often specialized software written by contractors, so "make it OSS" will just be a new requirement.

[treyd]

Do you have an example of something FOSS can't do?

[kenjackson]

In theory, of course not. But in practice sure. Simple, very accessible example, there’s no Madden open source alternative. And I’ve actually seen people try to do this.

I’d love to see an open source football/basketball/sports engine. But it’s hard to do, even without dealing with the licensing aspects.

I think a big part of the reason is that Big Tech really helps push along FOSS, but the licensing aspects make the ROI poor for Big Tech to invest in FOSS here.

[rvnx]

Photoshop vs Gimp for example

[cassianoleal]

Yeah, sure GIMP is not in the same class as Photoshop. How about GIMP vs. Paint?

GIMP is not the only open source image editor.

[mordae]

That's nonsense. Most of the software in question was written to support the administration. There is no existing closed source nor open source software as such, only software ordered by public sector and delivered by private sector under a license that guarantees vendor lock-in. Which, obviously, is insane policy and must go.

The software is updated to contemporary standards and rewritten as people come and go about every 10-20 years. Mandating it to be open source makes it simpler for new vendor to take over in those 10 years. And it might provide other benefits such as some degree of code reuse.

As for the foundational software, there usually is a regional partner of Canonical, SUSE, Red Hat, Microsoft and so on who re-sells the licenses and provides part of the support.

[mike_hearn]

Switzerland wouldn't care either way because it's not in the EU to begin with.