Just as in tech we build things that will get refactored and thrown away, it should be expected certain private sector components might be eventually deprecated when government steps in to provide as a public good.
> it should be expected certain private sector components might be eventually deprecated when government steps in to provide as a public good
I support many public goods, including this one, but they are a tool with appropriate uses just like private enterprise is. I don't want operating systems to be a government-provided 'public good'. Also, I think freedom is the core, but not only, value here, including in commerce. When government takes over, it's no longer a free market with free people.
I don't think governmental functions like tax collection should be subject to the free market. Where does this end? Do we end up with private militias that compete with municipal police departments? Do we end up with private militaries that compete with the US military? Do we end up with private court systems that compete with the DoJ?
Some things should not be privatized. The government allowing corporations to profit off of a civic duty like taxation, while offering no free public alternative, just anoints a handful of corporations with the gift of extracting profit from a mandatory governmental process. You should not be required to understand the intricacies of tax code, or pay for someone who does, just to file your taxes as required by law.
If a criminal has the right to be provided a public defender, then every American with an income should have the right to be provided with public tax preparation service from the same government that mandated tax collection in the first place.
> I don't want operating systems to be a government-provided 'public good'.
Huh. Interesting example. I actually do want to see a government produced public good operating system.
Where we're going, operating systems will either be ad filled messes or locked down walled gardens. A public good option would be required to meet high bars for interoperability while also not ad funded.
It's one thing to regulate away a market (make things illegal) and a very different situation if the government is just setting a bar for quality within a market.
Funny you bring that up, because 27% of all US Government systems run Linux. The problem is that the government doesn't give back any money, or contribute much code to the FOSS projects that they rely on. If they gave back proportionally like Linux Foundation Platinum sponsors do, they would get a return on their investment just in that they run enough Linux to benefit from contributing.
China has given money to FOSS projects far more than the US does, and there is an official Chinese Linux distro available to Chinese users. Nobody is forced to use it, outside of Chinese government employees on their work machines, but like a library, it is something of value that the state can provide to those who might need it.
