You're frustrated, but what are you doing to provide a better alternative? If national services lose control of their systems, what then? What is it that you expect to happen? The same people in charge, but making better decisions? A revolution that will magically fix everything?
I understand that you've been trying to persuade people of the merits of openness, but as you have experienced it's very difficult for an individual to persuade people of things without being a politician or offering some commercial bargains. Managers keep making bad decisions because they can always find someone who will write the code instead, but for some reason developers are unwilling to act in concerted opposition to this and so find themselves endlessly ignored and overruled.
> Managers keep making bad decisions because they can always find someone who will write the code instead, but for some reason developers are unwilling to act in concerted opposition to this and so find themselves endlessly ignored and overruled.
A labor union that protects you when you refuse to implement things that should not be implemented?
IMHO it is a difficult thing to manage and integrate into the tech culture.
It suits the management class very well to minimize the formation of organizational structures among technologists.
While I'm not a big fan of unions or guilds - insofar as they rely on internal hierarchies that just reproduce existing and faulty control structures - those who resist or deny the possibility of organization among technologists are not necessarily disinterested in the outcome.
I understand that you've been trying to persuade people of the merits of openness, but as you have experienced it's very difficult for an individual to persuade people of things without being a politician or offering some commercial bargains. Managers keep making bad decisions because they can always find someone who will write the code instead, but for some reason developers are unwilling to act in concerted opposition to this and so find themselves endlessly ignored and overruled.