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

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 207 points 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month 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.

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