I’m the last person to defend PE companies. I saw first hand what they were like when I was responsible for integrating acquisitions software. But there seems to be a lot more at play. Taxpayers too cheap to fund infrastructure. The article calls out fundraising drives needed to keep equipment up and running and training.
Why are firefighters volunteers anyway instead of getting paid?
Why should any company create software that they can’t do at a profit - ie rewriting software for a new federal standard?
Every problem is downstream of people wanting government services and not wanting to pay for them.
It's strange that this software isn't actually provided by the government to begin with. Quickly checking eso.com, most of their use cases are governmental to begin with.
what I don't get is the government collectively would save money just making it themselves.
Do they need software? Presumably the volunteer firefighters 30 years ago didn’t have this and did fine. Plenty of volunteer organizations are built on Airtable or some spreadsheets.
Stallman was right. Thankfully this seems like it should be relatively easy to replace. If anyone knows a friendly hacker collective to point this way...
We're just a couple steps away from reanimating Crassus at this point—if one interest controls both this sort of software and a REIT.... I suppose you might argue he's already achieved immortality as "capital", but that feels a little bland of an observation.
Anyway, https://archive.is/p7B8l
Why wasn't this software open source from the get-go? The writing seems to indicate that it was initially developed with altruistic intentions, but I don't see that at all. If the original developers wanted fire departments to have an affordable, lasting solution then proprietary software and VC funding seem like the wrong direction.
This is the type of need that open-source software exists to fill.
Why doesn't anyone start an open-source project that all fire departments can adopt? Yes, you still might need some paid support, but it wouldn't be anything close to what the PE vultures are charging.
Obviously the problem is relying on commercial software in the first place. The software in question needs to be open source. It needs to be developed and managed by multiple fire departments for everyone's use.
Are the PE firms by any chance involved with someone by the name of Count Olaf?
Volunteer Fire Departments = Amish Barn Raising
Fire Departments are the number one rent-seekers in the US so this is more like a cockroach being parasitized by a fungus. FARS regulations, in particular, are obvious crony capitalism. Elevator standards are less so, but still suspicious.
I'm always suspicious of articles like this. Having been part of a company that was the target of a few NYT articles, there is always more to the story. And parts that are just flat out wrong, but not being an expert or in the industry you just need to take their word for it and believe their anecdata.
I’m tired of living in a world where everything is financially engineered and those sociopathic money-hungry deviants use every trick in the book to turn all of us into life long subscribers.
What can we do about this?