There are open source options sometimes, but they are all faaar behind the commercial options. No fiscally sane business or government department would use them (unless they only need a small job, or are quite masochistic).

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

CAD is a good example. Open Source CAD solutions are very basic even for “normal” users and it does make a difference. Proprietary still makes sense for CAD today even with the FreeCAD 1.0 release. My son and I did just design a keyboard though using all free tools ( including PCB ). So not impossible.

I feel like the multimedia production stuff is less compelling specifically as we are talking about government.

The number of government employees that need a DAW ( as a percentage ) has to be vanishingly small and could be handled as exceptions.

Video production feels like a great example of where proprietary software is probably holding things back.

The vast majority of govt employees that need to edit video have very basic needs and could be served by FOSS solutions. Today, a few need top professional apps and I agree they should have them. My guess though is that the real problem in govt today is that lots of people that could benefit from video editing capability have been denied the budget for those pro apps and so have no capability at all. A FOSS solution may dramatically improve govt ability to create modern media simply by virtue of being available to a wider array of users.

For governments, I think the priority should be exchange and archive formats. Regardless of what apps and platforms they use, I as a citizen should be able to read that data via free software. Govt should be able to read what I provide to them. Govt in the future should be able to access archives if they have moved to free software.

Next is the platform ( the OS and the web browser ). You can run your proprietary video editing on Linux. If demand on the scale of ALL European gov moved to Linux, I assure you that Linux versions of the software they need would exist ( even if still proprietary ). I use Outlook on Linux every day. I also use Teams ( usually on Edge ). RMS would hate me. But I only archive to AV1 and Opus, never HEVC and AAC. Most of what I use is FOSS.

Least important really is the apps. I have no problem with companies solving problems better than FOSS and getting paid for it. Even by gov. As above though, those that do not need the “better” version should be free to use something else. And the “default” ( for things like basic docs ) should be FOSS too. This is just not as important as the file formats and platforms.

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

and could be handled as exceptions.

Indeed. The original comment was

the point should be to force public institutions to use FOSS

So it sounds like you agree with me that that is dumb. Use of FOSS should be strongly encouraged, but to force it is masochistic.