This structure also shows up with non-profits. For example, a foundation wants a museum. They work with various specialized, for-profit companies to build the building, put in the art preservation system, put in the security system, &c. However, even though it would seem everything could happen with just companies, the truth is, the composition of their efforts that makes a museum would not make sense if it were animated solely by those companies pursuing profits -- it is only the beneficial purpose of the museum that brings their efforts together in that way.
This points to a consistent, repeatable composition of organizations as a solution; and it's not something so novel.
The government may be able to manage something like Postgres; but I suspect it is more like a museum: we need a certain kind of stakeholder in the governance of the organization that is simultaneously broader and more narrow than the government. For infrastructure software, social networks and similar things, we want, on the one hand, an international assortment of stakeholders -- and we also want stakeholders who have some kind of real connection to software.
I think everyone agrees that Ghidra is pretty good for example. Ironically yes this is DoD project but surely it's possible to figure out how that team is setup and build out other software teams.
Some things seem to be invariants here: people need to get paid (or they will do something else); corporations are a good way to organize people to get paid to do something, whereas government is not; corporations are not organized for the public benefit and have to be balanced out by some other institution for public goods, like roads and many others, where aligning incentives through the market is too difficult.
What do you disagree with, in all that?
Now from the example you cite, and so many others, one direction we might take is that actually DoD projects are what works and so we just need to do more of them. This actually worked okay for the early history of the internet and we got quite a few decentralized, trustworthy communication mechanisms as a result -- the core internet protocols, email, the web. That seems to be tied to a certain era, though; so that's why I'm looking for alternatives. One option would be to do something like a museum: a non-profit that takes money from the public (sometimes as tickets and sometimes as grants) and then pays people (directly or through contractors) to accomplish something in the public good.
https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra
I'm talking about modern software, Ghidra.
> What do you disagree with, in all that?
It seems like a balance has been achieved somewhere in the US Government. Maybe Ghidra was an accident but if it could happen once, we can analyze the team behind it, the circumstance and create new government organizations that follow it.
And it can then serve as the basis of a model for other public-good software.
A lot of video game reverse-engineerers now use Ghidra for video game analysis. Its a really good tool. I can imagine that the security / infosec / bug-hunting communities would also like a tool like Ghidra. So it sounds good for a net-positive effect for the public good.
Its just kind of unexpected, that's all. But its still US Government software that has a good niche.
------------
I've seen some other analysis like Argonne National Labs GREET (https://greet.anl.gov/), which helps analyze different supply-chain models for how much greenhouse gasses exist.
And thanks to GREET, there are large scale analysis into what kind of EVs contribute to more greenhouse-gas emissions. A subject that requires deep analysis of the various chemistries that go into different EVs: NCA vs LiFePo4 vs NCM etc. etc.. As well as hypothetical future chemistries like Silicon or Sodium batteries. So we are now better able to focus on better solutions moving forward.
GREET sucks as a UI but the features are clearly good.
--------
Whenever I think of US Government software, these are the examples that come up. I think its... fine. The Government should make more tools for the benefit of society. GREET isn't as well written as Ghidra but its still software that matches the profile of public good that you and I are talking about.
I don't think Ghidra or GREET are even relevant -- what makes you include them here? They are cases where the government has produced some open source that is useful to developers -- even good open source "...sucks as a UI but the features are clearly good" -- but that's not really a problem we need to solve. There is plenty of good open source for developers.
For "societal software", as you put it, it's actually unworkable if it "...sucks as a UI but the features are clearly good"; it takes considerable design and usability resources to get the UI to be nice, and that's why the Discord vs IRC conversation comes. On the one hand, we have a company producing a product that developers actually want to use for chat, and on the other hand we have an open system that is increasingly falling behind.
Your point about "TCP/IP" and other historical software was that "it was a long time ago". I'm trying to point out that modern projects available today show that the Government is still an entity that can create good software that absolutely does crush other commercial works and/or serves niches that society needs that commerical failed to serve.
GREET is the example of societal software that must be created and is part of the solution to future climate change... in its small way. There needs to be programs that track emissions and analyzes supply chains and different products. I don't think any commercial (or open source) program could have done similar to GREET, its something that only a well-regarded lab (Argonne National Labs) can release and immediately gain recognition as a well-regarded program that makes decent estimates.
There was a time when people (ex: TCP/IP days) thought that government software was too powerful and that it'd wreck the free market just by participating. The reason the Government (IMO anyway) held back on software design is to protect the free market, but its always been an entity that could deliver if we just had the will to ask the government to make something.
-----------
The issues you're bringing up seem to all be about how commercial needs fail to line up to societal needs. But its never really been the commercial world's goal to make society better... its instead the commercial world's goal to make money for itself (which when well regulated, can often lead to societal improvement).
For any program that directly needs to improve society (ex: reverse engineering / software security... and/or supply chain analysis for climate change planning), its 100% should be a government project and owned by the government.
> There is plenty of good open source for developers.
Open Source has a major funding problem.
If people are willing to improve society voluntarily, that's good. But we can't rely upon that for every bit of computer infrastructure we have. To get true benefits as a society, we need to actually pay people.
This has to do with an old problem we have long seen in open source: open source does a good job developing protocols and fundamental software, but good user experience is not a strength, in general. When we consider what chat software actually is, it's actually a mix of several things: it needs a protocol, it needs a social network and policies thereof, and it actually needs a lot of user experience.
The government has never delivered quality consumer software. By "societal software", it doesn't seem like you mean social networking software or other software intended to be used by consumers. The examples you're offering are not relevant.
You are correct that open source has a funding problem, but not all public benefit ventures do. Many museums are good examples of a public benefit venture that, while not organized the way an open source project is (the museum is not free), is also not organized the way a corporation or the government is.
Has never _tried_ to do so.
Think about the problem of social networks. The network itself is a public good and infrastructure. Moderators that don't make money must be funded to keep the discussion network relevant and safe. (Otherwise spam, porn, hacks, doxxing, etc. etc. can overrun a network like 4chan / 8chan). Volunteers can do some of the job but not all of the job.
The problem with commercial enterprises, like Facebook, is that they only care about keeping just enough moderators to sell advertisements. We can see the limit to the moderation ability, no commercial software will seemingly extend beyond what we see from Meta / Instagram / Twitter / Reddit offers us (ex: loose collections of moderators that are clearly insufficient at the task).
Open Source has no money for masses of moderators like the commercial enterprises.
That leaves Government, a system we honestly haven't tried yet. We know government _can_ make software, even good software. We also know that government can create enforcement regimes (see Police, FDA, etc. etc.). It seems like a reasonable match to me. But we would need the political will to get Congress to fund such a venture.
Well, I think you are making a mistake, here. There are many other possible ways to organize non-profits besides the way open source is set up.
There's basically three organizations worth talking about. Governments, Corporations, and non-profits. If Corporations and Non-profits are out, the remaining one to do something is Government.