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openthc | 1 year ago

We create open-source software and attempt to get government agencies to adopt/use it. It's crazy how alergic these agencies are to open-source. Some will even create their own, with legacy style implementations (csv uploads, broken parsers), complete with bugs/flaws that are predicatble rather than use someone elses code.

When responding to RFPs, the open-source stuff has an a higher level of scrutinty than the closed systems. Like, if it's open then you have to show it's good but if it's closed the vendor just says "yep, we are perfect" and the agency could move on. It feels like the agency, and the employees don't want any responsibility. But I've never seen anyone lose their government job from some incompetence.

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georgeplusplus|1 year ago

>>>It's crazy how allergic these agencies are to open-source.

It’s about job protectionism on the greater scale and being the subject matter expert who leverages his code base for promotions on the individual scale. generally agencies do not view each other as working for the same team. It can be very competitive when lobbying for resources from congress for your agency.

I work in gov and speaking from first hand knowledge. The culture is toxic. It’s broken and I can’t wait to see what changes Elon and trumps team propose.

taskforcegemini|1 year ago

hopefully a different approach than with twitter

stronglikedan|1 year ago

You can't hold anyone accountable for open source. With closed source, there's someone else to point the finger at when things go wrong.

doublepg23|1 year ago

I heard this a lot before I started my career but IME this rarely pans out and you’re just stuck with broken software without documentation and source code.