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Strengthening digital infrastructure: A policy agenda for FOSS

"A @EU_Commission sponsored report found that in 2018, #EU companies invested roughly €1 billion into #FOSS creation, which resulted in up to a €95 billion benefit for FOSS users in the EU. Similar estimates for the #USA investment in FOSS were $33 billion in 2019. However, despite these attempts we have only scratched the surface of truly understanding the value FOSS provides to the economy and modern life"

brookings.edu/research/strengt…


Strengthening digital infrastructure: A policy agenda for free and open source software

Frank Nagle discusses free and open source software and its role in the future of digital infrastructure.
Frank Nagle (Brookings)
#foss #EU #USA @European Commission
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

censored for “transphobia”
censored for “transphobia”
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@lightweight This is why it’s important for public schools to use #FOSS. The taxpayer must fund schools & when schools buy proprietary s/w it’s a total loss for the taxpayer. But if the school invests in FOSS, the value of enriching the commons from the FOSS investment can be a reciprocal benefit to the taxpayer.
#foss @Dave Lane 🇳🇿
in reply to censored for “transphobia”

Whitney Loblaw
Whitney Loblaw
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I would have expected the investment into FOSS to be way higher in the EU compared to the USA! Very surprised. Does it have to with business investment vs org + gov investment?
in reply to Whitney Loblaw

censored for “transphobia”
censored for “transphobia”
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I suspect it may simply be that the tech sector is much bigger in the US. I don’t think it mentioned costs on proprietary software which is also probably higher in the US.
in reply to Whitney Loblaw

smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
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I wondered the same and thought that maybe it was maybe badly formulated and the 95 billion Euros are compared with that amount.
in reply to smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

censored for “transphobia”
censored for “transphobia”
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the corporate culture in the US is to outsource like crazy largely so middle managers can offload responsibility and redirect blame if something goes badly.. to have a scapegoat. They tend to favor commercial products because it’s impossible to hold FOSS volunteers accountable.
in reply to censored for “transphobia”

censored for “transphobia”
censored for “transphobia”
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The European management style is not to scapegoat, but managers have a bias for the look & feel of proprietary s/w like msword, and they expect everyone below them to use the tools they use. So because the managers use MS Word, the engineers down in the trenches must use that garbage too, instead of proper engineering tools which are largely in the FOSS domain.
in reply to censored for “transphobia”

Dave Lane 🇳🇿
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
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I like the angle of 'loss of sovereignty'. The EU has given away, in practice, most of its sovereignty to US tech corporations which are literally in control of all of the levers of power. (The same is true in most other gov'ts of the world). Any anti-trust deposition against Microsoft is written in MSFT Word on computers totally controlled by the Microsoft Corporation. It's a sovereignty issue.See too: invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=…

Microsoft-Software: Safe for Europe? (Full Documentary, 2018)

"Wanna Cry" was just the latest wake-up call: the cyber attack with the blackmail Trojan hit hundreds of thousands of computers in over 100 countries in May 2017.
Invidious
in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

hobs
hobs
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when your school kids use windows for all their machines its a safety/security issue with each vulnerability disclosure and ransom attack that shuts down a school or city gov
in reply to hobs

Dave Lane 🇳🇿
Dave Lane 🇳🇿
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I wrote this to describe a problem we have in NZ, but I suspect is pretty universal... maybe it's useful to others? davelane.nz/explainer-digitech…

Explainer: Digitech risks for School Boards

I'm a parent with two children in public schools in Christchurch, NZ. I'm also a software developer with an interest in education.
Dave Lane
in reply to Dave Lane 🇳🇿

hobs
hobs
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Wow. I love the way you framed the problem as a legal, practical one, rather than an economic, values or ethical opinion. I'll share this with two #edtech startup #CEO s that I'm pushing to adopt #FOSS and data protections to partially mitigate these risks for students and #schoolboard s.
in reply to hobs

censored for “transphobia”
censored for “transphobia”
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US schools are even more reckless. Parents don’t even get a tickbox. In one school I read about, a teacher actually signed up for all the individual google accounts and agreed to all the terms, then distributed account credentials to the students. Google probably has a rule against on person having multiple accounts & password sharing.
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