{"by":"wooby","id":647885,"kids":[648263],"parent":647557,"text":"The government should fund code development? How would individual programmers pitch their projects to the government? Not all code that's created, even if it's free, is ever useful to anybody. Figuring out how to \"turn code into consumer value\" is a very hard problem, as I'm sure any entrepreneur would tell you. And it's sort of a backwards way of looking at how software, and the people that make it, can benefit themselves and society best. First, there needs to a problem. Then, you solve it.<p>Anyways, I think the kind of thing you're talking about already exists in a more general way - government contracts. The government decides they have a problem, comes up with a list of specifications, and bidding on the proposed solution is open. The most qualified company that solves the problem for the least amount of money or in the shortest amount of time wins. (At least, that's how it's supposed to work.)<p>Many contractors that develop for the government, and bid on these contracts, already use FOSS because it gives them a competitive edge when bidding. For instance, some versions of the FBCB2, a communications system for humvees and other military vehicles, run on Red Hat: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBCB2\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBCB2</a> and <a href=\"http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:LLwHBOS8JmYJ:www.cjmtk.com/EventRegistration/CjmtkConf07/04_FBCB2_CJMTK_Migration.PDF\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:LLwHBOS8JmYJ:www.cjmtk.c...</a><p>I think that academia and savvy businesses are really where it's at with open source. As bad as academic bureaucracy can be, government bureaucracy is in my experience much, much worse.<p>So, all things considered, I'd think that even if the government had a direct interest in improving open source software, the best way to do it is through more funding for education - get more people to school, and get more people programming.","time":1244491453,"type":"comment"}