alt Hacker NewsThe tax authority in Norway alone employs 500 full-time software developers. If all of Europe followed France's example to adopt the UN Open Source Principles for all publicly funded development - and prioritized open formats + protocols + interoperability - it would within only a few years be possible to greatly improve software reliability for all nations.
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> followed France's example to adopt the UN Open Source Principles
Has this actually produced any tangible results?
I'm all in for interoperability, open source and such but the primary purpose of software is that it should work and actually achieve its task. I'm always skeptical of such top-down mandates where engineering principles or ideas are being pushed over tangible outcomes, as it usually leads to endless bikeshedding and "design by committee", while the resulting solution (if any is delivered before the budget runs out) is ultimately not fit for purpose.
EU countries are great at adopting principles. And saying things. And writing documents. And passing regulations.
Meanwhile, very country still runs on Microsoft and IBM.
I wonder if it would work if the governments provide some tax incentives for open source contributions similar to charity donations as well.
UK government standards say that government software should be open source by default https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard/point-12-...