Switzerland mandates all software developed for the government be open sourced - eviltoast
  • maxinstuff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    57·
    4 months ago

    This doesn’t seem like a big deal?

    The fact the code is open sourced is much less significant than the fact now the Swiss government will need to negotiate complete ownership of any software they commission.

    That’s going to make things more expensive for them, and limit the vendors prepared to work with them.

    Their systems, their call 🤷‍♂️

    • fungos@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
      8·
      4 months ago

      No, that is counter intuitive. It may appear more expensive at first, but on the long run it is a lot more cheaper. It avoid vendor lock-in, recurring increase of dev costs and licensing and lots of other plagues of closed proprietary development like blackbox development and justification of hidden complexity as a driving factor on costs. I worked with legacy closed proprietary sw development and lock-in combined with legacy complexity made man-hour costs exorbitant. These are partially solved by open-sourcing, as kicking out a team and putting a new one is easier, but most importantly transparency as a driving factor on quality of development.

    • Randelung@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      4 months ago

      At least for ASTRA, for software developed in their projects that’s already the case. Frameworks etc. used are not covered, but all source code for PLC and SCADA are theirs and you’re required to hand over all code as part of documentation at the end. As a zip on a USB key, never to be looked at again.

    • uis@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      the fact now the Swiss government will need to negotiate complete ownership of any software they commission.

      I can’t find it