Rust Coreutils & Reproducible Builds Receives Funding From The Sovereign Tech Fund

[DMJC]

No wonder the German government has no money, look at how much they're throwing away. Almost 100K euros into a Rust-written coreutils replacement that no one uses, fantastic, great investment, couldn't have been spent on anything else.
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You do realise that once Rust Coreutils is fully compliant a lot of distros will adopt it as the default yeah? The only reason I don't run it today is because it is about 70% complete. There are a lot of people patiently waiting for the linux network stack to be fully purged of all memory exploits.

[novideo]

In regards to licensing, the elephant in the room that no one seems to address is that governments can't always hide state secrets while maintaining compliance with licenses like the GPL that require them to disclose any source modifications. Governments being accountable to their own laws is supposed to be one the cornerstones of free, democratic societies so it's important that they use software in ways that are legal. Them setting the precedent of "We do one thing while everyone else does it differently " is how unfree societies come about so you can't really blame a democratic government for encouraging the use of memory safe languages with extremely permissive licenses. Their job is to balance Free and Safe and, from a government's perspective, the MIT/BSD and Rust accomplishes those goals.

I really don't know what changes a tank, nuclear power plant or submarine, space station, or waste processing plants all need done to coreutils/uutils, but they might need something done differently that they don't want to share. What's the alternative? A GPLv4 system where the governments of the world get a free-use clause? Because that'll go over well with freedom rights advocates

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#PrivateSoftware

[oleid]

That makes it sound somewhat good?

A debt of ~60% GDP is neither good nor really bad. You cannot compare personal debt or the debts of a company with the debts of a country.
Germany could easily increase it's debts to 110% (France) or even 120% (USA) without major problems. And that could make sense, if it was investments, i.e. public infrastructure, schools and even Software of public interest. Those investments pay back in the longer run and thus will reduce the debts again.

[Anux]

... Those investments pay back in the longer run and thus will reduce the debts again.

All evidence points against it, the debts have never been reduced however much was spend. This also needs to have the possibility of infinite growth to make any logical sense. We already take debts to pay out interest, which shows that we are far away from any point of return.

[smitty3268]

All evidence points against it, the debts have never been reduced however much was spend. This also needs to have the possibility of infinite growth to make any logical sense. We already take debts to pay out interest, which shows that we are far away from any point of return.

Inflation naturally reduces debt over time, if it isn't growing. The other thing that makes national debt different is that you can just decide to zero it out at any time, because you can always just print the money and declare everything paid off. Yes, that would increase inflation, and generally isn't done because of that. But it's always an option - and the fact that the debt is viewed as less of a problem than inflation is indicative that they don't really view it as a big problem.

[Anux]

Inflation naturally reduces debt over time, if it isn't growing.

It reduces GDP and spending power at the same rate, no gains there to be made.

The other thing that makes national debt different is that you can just decide to zero it out at any time, because you can always just print the money and declare everything paid off.

Oh yeah hyper inflation, that looks like a reasonable mechanism to reduce debt. ^_^ Show me any example where it has ever done something good to the economy.

Also if someone declares our debts to zero our local financial system would collapse and we would loose any possibility to participate in global economy (no one trades with partners that don't pay their debts) and export is germans biggest driver.

[oleid]

All evidence points against it, the debts have never been reduced however much was spent

investments in education, for example, will reduce debt in the long run since more education will lead to more income for various reasons.

his also needs to have the possibility of infinite growth to make any logical sense.

That's the assumption our economies currently operate on, yes.

We already take debts to pay out interest, which shows that we are far away from any point of return.

Taking debts to pay debts can make sense if the interest rate is lower and thus can result in net reduction of debt.

[Anux]

I'm sorry for of topic, so a little question to stay on it. Why do they pay out such strange amounts (353430, 99060, 993600)? This looks petty, 99060 instead of 100000 or even 99000?

investments in education, for example, will reduce debt in the long run

That also doesn't seem to work, we are investing in education since the beginning, how much longer does it need to pay off? It would certainly be worse without education but it doesn't look like the tool to get rid of debts.

Taking debts to pay debts can make sense if the interest rate is lower and thus can result in net reduction of debt.

Probably, but to my knowledge we do it because we don't have enough financial budget, which should be alarming if it's done regularly.
I don't think any company could survive with the philosophy "if we just make more and more debt, it will somehow reduce itself" you need a middle term plan to pay back. At some point you wont get new credits and the system will collapse. Trusting on the smart people from your education system to earn much money and pay enough taxes wont work if you leave holes (like Amazon is using to avoid taxes).

[oleid]

That also doesn't seem to work, we are investing in education since the beginning, how much longer does it need to pay off? It would certainly be worse without education but it doesn't look like the tool to get rid of debts.

Since the beginning of what?
I'd say the investment is paying off. But at least where I live the investment was too low for the last 20-30 years. School buildings old, toilets are broken. Classes are too big. There needs to be a constant influx of money for every generation.

Same as for roads and public transport. Railway tracks are worn, roads have holes in the asphalt. And so on...

[Anux]

Since the beginning of what?

State sponsored schools, around 100 years?

But at least where I live the investment was too low for the last 20-30 years. School buildings old, toilets are broken. Classes are too big. There needs to be a constant influx of money for every generation.
Same as for roads and public transport. Railway tracks are worn, roads have holes in the asphalt. And so on...

That's true, I work at an university and know how bad it is but also how much money is wasted.
And yes the priorities of our government are totally wrong. But if elections aren't rigged it doesn't seem to bother many people.

Edit: one good investment (worth taking debts for) in education would be to build open source IT solutions so we can save license cost for proprietary stuff, it would be a calculate able return (no license cost in the future) with positive effects on sustainability (hardware longevity and cost).

That's why I think this (topic STF) is a good direction but far from enough.