Re: Why All Software Should Be Open Source

On 10/10/24 21:28, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 17:32:03 -0400, bad sector wrote:
 

Since electricity was nationalised in Quebec it's being offered at cost
plus profit, the total for domestic consumption is 1/6 or 1/8 of the
rate in Arizona (I forget the exact ratio) while shaving enough off to
finance development. We do have hydro resources but even if we were
generating with fuel the ratio would still be rather embare-assing.
That's what I mean by vital infrastructures.

 It was ill conceived and there were other problems but Hydro-Quebec was
the nail in the Maine Yankee nuclear plant's coffin. It was one of the
casualties of the energy deregulation fiasco of the late '90s as cheap
power flooded the New England states.
 I don't know if deregulation achieved lower energy prices for the New
England consumers. In this state it allowed the power company to sell its
generating capacity to an out of state company and use the money to
reinvent itself as an internet company -- just in time to go bankrupt in
the dotcom bust.
 So much for wise government policy.

Most governments have too many things ass-backwards but in Quebec Hydro-Quebec was IMO the most overdue cleanup that Rene Levesque accomplished and most Quebecers think so regardless of political partisanry. If he hadn't done it I would since then have paid about a quarter of a million MORE for my electricity over 50 years (to be compounded of course). There are no ifs or buts, vital infrastructure must be free of sticky paws and there's more than a little space in there for OSes as well as fossware.