downloading the app was very simple. I didn’t need to set up an account, or any of that nonsense
Ya love to see it
I presume this £4m app paid for by the public purse is open source so that we can all see and benefit from it? Anyone got a link?
why would that mean it has to be open source? Should we be open sourcing all our defece projects too?
Yes.
(You …do know you can open the source without losing all your secrets, right? Right?)
It’s a transport app. Not the code to the nuclear defences.
that’s not my point. it’s the assumption that anything tax payer funded should be open source by default.
as a tax payer, I’m not sure I want other countries freeloading on our investments.
Thank you sir for making this planet a living hell
Great point. If someone else may derive value from it, then it is a lost cause and no one should have it.
“I have helped pay for something good. More people could benefit from it, at no additional cost to me. But I’d rather they not.”
Some people can’t help but look at the common human endeavour and think, “this tower is getting too tall, God should punish our teamwork.”
as a tax payer, I’m not sure I want other countries freeloading on our investments.
Ugh. Money is a curse
Then it dies as an investment, relegated to the halls of decay like other closed source apps as soon as it loses relevance
Maybe you should only use it based on how much you paid/contributed. You don’t want to free load off other tax payer’s money
I do, when those investments can be copied for free
“You wouldn’t steal a car”, but if you could download one from the internet the world would be a better place.
as a tax payer, I’m not sure I want other countries freeloading on our investments.
Ugh. Money is a curse
That might not be practical. But everything else done with public money should be open source. A lot of these software projects are more or less necessary for every city globally. Collaborating on a few apps and programmes is a lot more sensible then everyone having an app custom build by a contractor.
so any other country should get free access to all the software the UK tax payer invested in?
nah. I don’t think so.
Oh no! Somebody else might benefit from something you would’ve made anyway, at no additional cost to you! The horror!
We also get free development and contributions from others.
And the UK taxpayer might save money by using open source projects funded by other municipality in different countries. This is already the standard for some EU projects.
Could some countries ‘freeload’? Sure. But what’s the actual cost for that? The people in those places getting better software, while the original users are no worse off?
Could also help with less wealthy countries having access to software they couldn’t otherwise afford to develop.
Public money of one jurisdiction shouldn’t necessarily pay for things so a different jurisdiction gets them for free. It’s an opportunity for the city to generate some revenue to offset other costs. Or it could be structured as a non-profit effort to develop open source, paid by ongoing grants from a number of cities that would use it - that would be nice, but difficult to orchestrate .
Right, so keep it simple and just open source it
See my reply to the other comment.
I really do believe that the most sensible way to formalise it is just requiring publically funded code to be open source. Requires less complexity than co-op, and works out the same if enough countries opt-in.
See this as an example:
Open source defeces projects do sounds pretty shit.
Security by obscurity doesn’t exist, so perhaps yes.
Proprietary app, run by Trafi, a company that advertises itself as selling “mobility as a service”.
No thanks.
Wouldn’t doubt it’s just an enshittified frontend to Google Maps.
Good work. Less reliance on american shite, labour council doing something that benefits british people, using public funds to fund public benefitting programs. In Kent however under Reform they invented 40 million of savings and spent over one third of the cost to create this app (1.5million) on a single private car park for themselves.
A new £4m transport app […] which has now been downloaded more than 5,000 times
I know it has to start somewhere, but still, I can’t help being tickled that it’s currently costing £800 per user.
Link to the app since it wasn’t directly linked in the article.
