Well put.

Would it make more sense if this Sovereign Tech Agency behaved less like a Sovereign Tech Fund and simply hired the developers? Or is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy?

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oytis an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy

I see two problems here for Germany. First, the salaries of civil servants are regulated, and might be not what most developers, even German ones, expect. In addition civil servant status is bundled with privileges and duties that make it painful to lay it down. Most developers are used to job flexibility though, especially as, as I said, the salaries are not going to be great.

Second, there is a decision by the Constitutional Court that prohibits the state from competing with the market. Temporary grants to independent actors are among other things a way to work around it.

	▲	repelsteeltje an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The first part boils down to any civil servant: inflexibility and lower wages aren't for everyone, but it should not be impossible to attract talent intrinsically motivated to contribute to public cause. Especially when it's OSS. The second part is a bit closer to the heresy angle: new public management forbids competing with "free market". Of course, many EU governments have always found and used all kinds of loopholes to support "independent enterprises" like railways, airlines, power companies and banks once they become too big to fail. Maybe commodity open source software has reached that level too...

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ximm 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

There is also the option of structural funding (Strukturförderung in german) where important organizations receive multi-year contracts instead of short term project funding.