The open-source bailout

Give someone a blank check to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's amazing all the good that they can (purport to) do with other people's money.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has put together his own list of bailout proposals, which included $2 billion to help fund open-source software makers.

Such a proposal should make open-source advocates like me happy, right?

Wrong. Open source is doing just fine without a government stimulus. In fact, I'd argue that the easiest way to discern a thriving industry is to check on how much money it has to beg off the government. Open source gets some government encouragement (depending on the government), but little to no government cash (depending on the government). Verdict? It must be doing OK.

Government stimuli can do the opposite of what is intended, fostering disincentives to productivity rather than incentives. That's why I (mostly) like IBM Chief Executive Sam Palmisano's suggestions on how to spark the U.S. economy. He doesn't ask for bailouts. He asks for smart touch-ups to our infrastructure, including broadband.

Does open source offer a great way to take advantage of an investment, such that the government conceivably would get more out of its investment than it puts in? Sure. But open source ain't broke. Let's not try to fix it, especially through government means. I worry how that would skew the incentives that are already working to make open source one of the top three forces in technology today.

[xgenx]

Good to see someone using reason. The bailout is the monkey's paw of the economy. Most people will just snatch it up and make a wish without considering the end result. "Free" money from the government? What could go wrong?

[dmm]

It doesn't seem right for the gov't to fund open-source, since open-source projects compete directly with private businesses, or else are used as a source of revenue by some private businesses but not others (e.g., Debian vs. RedHat vs. Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Google vs. ??).

Gov't is only supposed to directly support societal infrastructure, i.e., stuff that everyone wants and uses and benefits from, but no one wants to (or even, should not be allowed to) pay for themselves, such as roads, bridges, internet backbone, basic research, defense, law enforcement, law-making, etc.

Having said all that, I wouldn't object to the gov't funding a project to replace C with a fundamentally secure language. But I'm speaking in ignorance; perhaps there are unavoidable reasons for all of C's security flaws.

[deepwave]

No offence, a program is only as secure as its source code is. You can write unsecure code in any language under the sun. You can also write secure code in any language too. Security is a state of mind. And states of mind should NOT be mandated by governments.

[MSSlayer]

C and C++ are the cause of the majority of the security flaws in the past.

They are dangerous languages because they don't even try to force the programmer to write more securely.

Try writing a Java or Ruby program that you can exploit a stack or heap overflow with. When those languages do suffer from them, it is the JVM or interpreter that has the flaw. Guess what language that is written in? It has 1 letter and starts with C.

You are completely wrong in asserting that languages don't factor into security. Yes, no matter what language you use the programmer has to understand security(most so called professional programmers do not understand it at any legitimate level), but what language you choose makes a huge difference.

[deepwave]

Thank you for being one of few sane people resisting the urge to bailout everything that moves.