Technology

58748 readers

4802 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

554

[Cory Doctorow] With An Audacious Plan To Halt The Internet’s Enshittification And Throw It Into Reverse (hackaday.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by mesamunefire to c/technology

115 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] cybersandwich 207 points 2 weeks ago (39 children)

Another way to encourage interoperability is to use the government to hold out a carrot in addition to the stick. Through government procurement laws, governments could require any company providing a product or service to the government to not interfere with interoperability. President Lincoln required standard tooling for bullets and rifles during the Civil War, so there’s a long history of requiring this already. If companies don’t want to play nice, they’ll lose out on some lucrative contracts, “but no one forces a tech company to do business with the federal government.”

That's actually a very interesting idea. This benefits the govt as much as anyone else too. It reduces switching costs for govt tech.

[–] Benjaben 57 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

Can confirm, I've worked for a company doing govt contract work and I really don't know what it'd take for us to have walked away. They can dictate whatever terms they like and still expect to find plenty of companies happy to bid for contracts I think.

[–] errer 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s because they pay big dollars for comparatively little work with little validation of the quality of said work.

[–] Benjaben 12 points 1 week ago

That hasn't been quite my experience. For one thing, they cap their pay and don't (can't) negotiate like a private client. So generally less money per given project.

Comparatively little work and little validation also wasn't my experience but I do get the sense it used to be more common, and it did feel like the experience I had was in some sense a reaction to previous contractors taking advantage.

load more comments (13 replies)

load more comments (36 replies)