As a counterpoint, I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office, while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity. Although, I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that.
This is exactly what Sun thought. They looked at their licensing bill for using MS Office and thought they could develop an Office suite for less than that themselves. They bought this little German company which made "Star Office" and started developing it for their own use and also selling it. Turns out, it didn't work. So they Open Sourced it, called it OO.org... it still didn't work. 20 years, many rebrands and many changes of ownership later, that same piece is software is still struggling to find a way to exist. Turns out, developing a competitor to MS Office is not that easy or cheap.
Do you think it would be right for the government to fund a competitor to an American business? Wouldn't it make sense for the government to just use or license Libre Office if it was good enough to meet their needs?
Eh, I don't see the problem. If the government decided not to renew a contract with SpaceX because they thought they could do it better themselves, should they not? Tax money spent on government research should be public. I do think they should follow any of Microsoft/SpaceX's IP laws (but also file their own for the public).
> Wouldn't it make sense for the government to just use or license Libre Office if it was good enough to meet their needs?
Sure, if the math and logistics worked out. I kind of think Office and Microsoft are too entrenched now.
I think the reason it wouldn't be a huge deal is you would still need some sort of business arm for it to get traction--like a Red Hat. So basically Microsoft would just lose a government contract.
>I imagine the amount of money the US government already spends on MS Office could fund development of something as good or better than Office
No, it can't. Microsoft lives and breaths Office 365 because that is a core part of their business. There is zero chance that a government will care as much about this as Microsoft does, or the 10,000 other companies that are trying to supplant incumbents. Add to that the fact that funding will be uneven, because if the tool achieves a 'good enough' status, why keep funding it when you have all those other interest groups vying for money. The project will be susceptible to lobby and interest groups. Maybe a Senator will see it as a job-works program and move development to Alaska to provide Alaskan programmers jobs.
Time and time again these massive government-run software project collapse on their face.
In the commercial space, government just cannot compete with private industry ... at all. And this is not a libertarian disparagement of government. Government has a proper function, and competing in software with commercial offerings is not one of them.
>while giving it away free to the rest of society improving productivity
Says who? In fact, this is guaranteed to not be the case, because who is to say that funding a word processor is a productive application of capital when you're not responding to market forces.
We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great. It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did.
>Add to that the fact that funding will be uneven, because if the tool achieves a 'good enough' status, why keep funding it
If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point. That is a good thing.
The federal government isn't the only potential source of government funding.
>In fact, this is guaranteed to not be the case, because who is to say that funding a word processor is a productive application of capital when you're not responding to market forces.
I don't follow. Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades, which is a response to market forces.
>We have federally-funded national Research labs that regularly take on nuanced, technical challenges like this, and they work great.
Not in commercial space. Government is good for funding cutting edge research with no obvious commercial benefit. That's a good role for government. Government is atrocious at competing with commercial offerings.
>It's not like a federal bureaucracy designed and built multiple mars rovers, engineers did.
Right now there is no way for private industry to do better than NASA because there is no clear commercial benefit and the money to develop potential commercial benefits are completely prohibitive. The missions that NASA engages in, from rovers on Mars, to New Horizons probe, to James Webb telescope are very important, and could not be done by private industry (though private industry is sub-contracted for many parts of those projects). That's a proper role for Government - identify gaps that the market has left but that have societal importance and fill then with funding from taxpayers.
>If it is good enough, sure, it doesn't need the same amount of funding required to get it to that point.
Word processing has been 'good enough' since 1995 - why isn't everyone using Office 95, or LibreOffice.
But you do demonstrate why government software projects fail - there is never and 'endpoint' (or 'good enough' point) to software. You're always updating based on market needs.
>Because we can spend less money building a thing once than renting it annually for decades and decades
I reject the assumption, it won't be cheaper to move off of Office. It won't be cheaper to build an alternative. Again, why isn't LibreOffice everywhere? The product is free. Why are companies paying for Office? Are they stupid? Maybe because there are hidden costs, from maintenance, deployment, collaboration with other sites, training, etc. that make using LibreOffice actually more expensive in practice than Office.
And by the way, for many companies, Google Suite has supplanted Office (which is typically a paid product). But again, somehow the fact that LibreOffice free, didn't translate to being competitive with that offering.
> Time and time again these massive government-run software project collapse on their face.
Which is why I said "I wouldn't bet on the management of that project playing out like that." I also completely agree Microsoft is way too entrenched to start something today.
> In the commercial space, government just cannot compete with private industry ... at all.
I kind of think you're overstating what I was suggesting (likely, I stated it poorly). Instead of paying Microsoft $x annually for MS Office, I think for less money they could write and maintain something that fits their own needs. Since it was developed with tax dollars, release it publicly. I doubt
businesses would adopt it unless some independent companies popped up to facilitate it (like Red Hat does for OSS).
The goal wasn't to replace Microsoft Office in society, just to fulfill its own needs.
