Hacker News

Soft launch of open-source code platform for government

32 points by e12e 51 minutes ago | 7 comments

ivolimmen 17 minutes ago

I am Dutch and I am glad they finally started to do some open sourcing. I have worked at different governmental bodies and have been promoting open source for some time now. But as a simple 'added hands for hire' I never got any response to my pleas. I guess it's typical Dutch that we are one of the last to do so.

embedding-shape 5 minutes ago

I am living in Spain, and from my point of view, Netherlands is one of the ones doing the most for FOSS in Europe today! It sees much faster real-world adoption of FOSS in ministries and municipalities than other countries, the government seems eager to fund FOSS (again, compared to other countries) and generally be welcoming to the ecosystem. Browsing around, there seems to be lots of FOSS projects funded by money coming from the Dutch state.

Kind of interesting how the perspective is so different from the inside! Maybe it's the typical "the grass is always greener..."?

oever 8 minutes ago

The government still plans to place the authentication system of all Dutch citizens in USA hands.

And interestingly, code.overheid.nl runs from a residential ip address.

hvb2 7 minutes ago

> The government still plans to place the authentication system of all Dutch citizens in USA hands.

That's not a fair characterization. The company that runs it might be bought. That's not planning to put it in USA hands

newsclues 2 minutes ago

Is there a network or organization for the coordination of government open source projects?

I love the idea of my city, region or nation (or planet) working to solve a problem and releasing the tool to the public. I just don't want every government to duplicate all the same work, some duplication and competition is fine. But the idea that different places have different specialities etc....

sam_lowry_ 19 minutes ago

There's not much here https://code.overheid.nl/explore/repos but good luck anyway.

dewey 8 minutes ago

I mean...it's a soft launch, not sure what you expect.