Senator Daniel Squadron, a senator from New York Stat, has co-sponsored a bill along with Senator Ruth Russel-Thompson to provide a tax credit to open source software developers for writing free software. The senators hope to encourage greater technology development in an effort to create jobs and add to the state’s technology sector. Senate bill S161 would allow developers to claim 20% of their out-of-pocket costs on building and sharing open source software up to a maximum of $200 per year. The meager credit would be unique in the US, and is an interesting effort by the NY state legislator.
