Switzerland mandates all software developed for the government be open sourced

Public money, public code!

This is the way it should be. Governments around the world have spent decades enriching big tech with public money, when they could have pooled their resources and built FOSS software that benefited everyone.

Same goes for science and everything else funded by tax payers.

Meanwhile my country's apps don't let you open them if you have Developer Options enabled on android :)

All governments should take notice

Been contracting for the Swiss government for years, namely ASTRA. They have 0 concept of how that should happen. It's their IP, but they don't want to take it, host it, maintain it, or do anything else with it once the project is done.

Do they just expect others to foot the bill? Sure, free GitHub exists, but everything else? Open sourcing without maintenance is abandonware and usually useless.

Open source will always be the best option, especially with a government supporting it! Imagine what government funding could do to accelerate improvements to Linux

"unless precluded by third-party rights or security concerns", so this bill does nothing

I work for a company which creates software for the government. Super exited for more OSS projects.

That's fucking amazing

Hopefully more governments will follow this. At the very least, the taxpayer should have the right for whatever software's source code that it funds development.

This makes me curious in the US on whether or not government app source code would be provided via a FOIA request.

I think that's a good call.

If the people are paying for it through taxes, it shouldn't be contracted out to some company who lock further development behind their continued involvement.

I guess it's not convenient to have Microsoft and Apple scan your company images and employee emails. Even take screenshots automatically if they can get away with it.

Appearently other countries are fine with this, which surprises me much more.

I guess the corpo version of windows have these sort of things turned off? But ms can turn them on whenever they want.

Switzerland being based af ngl 😎😎😎

I hope more governments do this, especially after how unsurprisingly shit (read: insecure) microsoft has become.

Awesome!

That's a very surprisingly amazing thing of them!

There going to face a whole bunch of compatibility issues when dealing with other countries imho. However, i personally find this to be a good thing. Its at the very least a strike at the heart of big systems controlling the masses.

Wasn't there EU-wide law about it?

Now there is some common sense.

Tangential, but there's a long list of government github accounts here: https://government.github.com/community/

Wwwaiiiiiittt... So does this mean OS too? Is an entire country switching to the dark side? Linux, I mean Linux

Together monkey strong!!

bites lip, damn Switzerland…. that is hot as fuck

Can't wait for our US government to catch up never.

If only other non-podunk countries would follow suit.

Good. Now try ODF, to have a choice aside from MS Office.

Is their Microsoft deal about to expire?

That's really cool

common switzerland W

after the recent microsoft hacks this is probably a good call

I wonder how this will impact us infrastructure types. I am sure there must have been an exception to the rule at least once in my career but I can't recall any, code I have made for all governments has been open source and if you lost it somehow I would just email it.

My only concern would be the systems that my code runs on top of won't be willing to share. It is one thing to demand it from me, another to demand it from Siemens. Then you add in very low level code for individual devices such as VFDs

I guess the nightmare would be that PLC/DCS/VFD makers would basically be blacklisted and I would have to work around that fact.

Nice, so everyone will see the shitty code used by the administration

I’m curious if this also applies to military or intelligence software. I’m guessing at the very least software embedded in weapons systems is not included. If I understood the article correctly there were some exemptions for security reasons.

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 🤷‍♂️

And still I wonder why almost all public institutions use Micro$oft & Co...

Nothing to see here, Same BS, Laws that do nothing, See GDPR,

That's disappointing, they should mandate obligatory WhatsApp use country wide.

Open Source code for Science/Mathematics/Medicinal related fields 👍

Open Source code for Security/Social Media/Psychological related fields 👎