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My toughts:

2. Yes, in areas where other governments profit isnt your loss. I think there are lots of these. For example, if you have software which makes people more healthy, you wont lose if people in other countries get healthier as well.

3. Yes, similarly in many areas others auditing the software is harmless.




I have found that not everyone in the public sector would agree with (2). By giving away the software you lose the ability to sell it and recover some of the money you spent on it. Similarly, funding the development of proprietary software involves less capital expenditure because the developer can charge less than they spend and still profit by selling to others. I don’t believe that either of these arguments are sound, but it’s hard to respond to them when the experts on how software development should be done are the contractors who benefit from these arrangements.




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