Switzerland is the first open source country (yes really)

The idea of all government software being open source is somehow both obvious and crazy. I kind of love it. I really hope this goes well and a new standard is set as a result.

S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[xenitane]

one more benifit this will have is that then the general public can step in and supply fixes for bugs they find.

[dstinYwOw]

Public money = public code is such a great idea. I wish Poland would embrace it more, not stealing opensc code for their ID thing, denying it, and then silently either obfuscating it, or removing entirely. Same with public transport systems - APIs should be public, but very few places on earth have it as well made, as Germany or UK :/

[xaf]

I used Switzerland's free topology map model once for a project. Tried damn hard to get any map from anywhere to demonstrate my app, couldn't find them, only in Switzerland.

[padonker]

You may want to highlight the "data" aspect as well. As a citizen I should have access to the raw data that policy is being based on. You can find tons and tons of data on the Swiss government sites as it's "default open".

[YvesBlatti]

Not only opensource, but DATA is also "Open by default" (except security, safety, etc)

[raquetdude]

2:41 fyi it says German State. “State” it’s like saying Arizona ditches Microsoft for Linux and Libreoffice.
It’s not the nation state of Germany.
Just saying that as lot of ppl are thinking it’s all of Germany.

[soulhax]

fyi Estonia had open source code before Switzerland.

[zurichcyclist]

I am working at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology and not only the software. Now the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) also requie that all data created in the project that is funded by SNSF be open to the public. Every publication funded by the money from SNSF are also reuqired to be open (the institution will pay the publisher to make them open access).

[padonker]

It's a no brainer to have government funded software to be open source. What'd complete it, is if the government would also provide an IP entity for other OSS projects in the country. A la Apache, .net foundation. IMHO that would be a huge move for the OSS community as it'd make ownership even more transparent and democratic.

[rolandhuszti]

BBC used to have awesome JS and UI libraries. and their R&D team contributed massively to the tech world. Dirac video codec, teletext, NICAM, Freeview, FM and stereo radio, RDS, etc.

[Stasisdrone]

Hey so I work for the Singapore government, and a good chunk of our government code is also open source. We also have a subdivision of our government who works almost entirely in open source (Open Government Products)!

[borerofhope]

One thing worth noting: The Swiss law mandating open source only applies to the federal government. Sadly, the state governments of Switzerland can still do closed source stuff.

[acer]

Studying: 😴
Fucking with the Switzerland repository: ✅

[hosmanadam]

This is a huge loophole: "unless the rights of third parties or security-related reasons would exclude or restrict this." I have a feeling that government entities can always find a "security-related reason". Anyway, this is cool. However, I am more excited about public contributions to these open source projects than about the value of them being available to the public. The latter may be nice, the former would be absolutely crucial in some cases. Not that much in Switzerland, where most government websites are OK, but for example, in Hungary (in EU), government websites are the absolute worst excruciating user experiences you can think of, and almost any junior dev worth their salt could implement something better.

[mrt]

"I contributed to Switzerland" 💀🔥

[kasercsgo]

thanks for covering this, as a swiss I would‘ve completely missed it otherwise.

[nicejungle]

That's awesome for Switzerland !
I hope we do the same in EU
Public money === Public code
It just makes sense in every ways

[Maxime-foiv]

I hope that makes governement software both cheaper and better. If this regulation gets adopted in the rest of Europe, we might see many lines of code being copy-pastes and improved in the process across borders, and maybe also direct collaboration between countries to create better portals to access public services, better software that can make city halls more efficient, and so on! I would also love to see a huge lot of city websites getting open sourced, so that cities can easily change to a better website for cheap, improving their quality of service to their residents! You got it, I'm really excited about all of this.

[haeriarman]

This is an amazing initiative needs to be implemented everywhere

[mrpiggy]

Half my family is from Switzerland. I don’t live there but I see this as an absolute W for the objective best country in Europe