Selling Open Source on the Campaign Trail

Waldo Jaquith writes: "I'm a long-time advocate and user of open source and free software and, as of this morning, I am a candidate for the Charlottesville, VA (USA) City Council. Naturally, I see lots of areas in Charlottesville's IT infrastructure (as well as potential areas of expansion) where Linux and various free software projects would be ideal. But can I make that a talking point while campaigning? How do I make that concept accessible and interesting to 40,000 citizens?"

Comments

No one will care

[Anonymous Coward]

And you won't get elected if you try to pound home the concept of Open Source software.

The costs are not as negligible as you may think. The switching costs alone would be enough to invalidate any budget item that you'd propose.

You'd be ineffectual as a first-timer and likely would get voted out in the next round.

Pick a real issue that affects your district and campaign on that. Sneak in Open Source whenever you can, but don't think that it is as important to your constituents as it is to you.

40,000 or 400?

[spamkabuki]

I don't think you can make the general voting populace care about open source as a campaign issue. It will just distract from your other (I hope) sound campaign stances.

OTOH, campaigns aren't won by getting all the votes, just by getting enough. Elections can be decided by a slim margin. Will 400 more votes make the difference for you? Maybe.

You can talk about open source to the right people; LUGs, CS students at local schools, IT/tech workers, etc. Target your open source msg to these folks and bring in non-voters or sway fence-sitters in these groups.

Once you win, push open source solutions to save money. Tax payers love saving money on gov't budgets. You can then use this goodwill/political capital to get things done and/or continue to serve in gov't.

Open Source Spin

[yndrd]

Some general directions to try:

• Cite it as part of a drive to cut costs in the government.
• Ask why most of the software used by the government of a democracy is created by a single corporation.
• Include it as a point of reference to demonstrate ways you won't be doing business as usual (not the centerpiece, but one of many contributing factors).
• Mention that it may help create a more secure government web strategy (instead of Microsoft).
• Find out if there are open source companies/developers in your area and promote it as a way to fuel the local tech economy.

Those are just off the top of my head. I agree with other posters that not too many people are concerned with open source directly, but as a symbol of democracy, free market capitalism, and innovation, it might help you make some points.

Save money, avoid liability

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to saving money, you avoid the BSA (Microsoft gestapo). In Charlottsville, you also have a large pool of available software consultants from UVA who can help, saving more money.

Also, this is the right time for this: the alternative is to convert to XP soon, and a LOT of businesses an orginazations are worried about
the XP licensing model.

Here are some thoughts

[Mean_Nishka]

As a political consultant and future candidate myself, here's some pointers that should work for you. First, I must say that it's good to have candidates running for office who have a speciality that doesn't involve being a lawyer. Those with a niche tend to be very successful in public service since they have knowledge and skills others don't. Here are some points to consider for your campaign:

1. The electorate doesn't know nor could care less about what open source is vs. Microsoft. Further, it's likely to go over their heads. Remember these folks buy their computers from the Home Shopping Club or their local Staples supply store. Operating systems and terminiology won't win votes. You will need to get the term 'open source' out there, but make it simple so people understand its meaning. Come up with a real-world analogy to better describe it.

2. What will win votes are the economics of open source. How much money in property taxes are these people paying to support an inefficient IT infrastructure? How many millions are being wasted by software licenses that are not necessary?

3. Know that a city council MACRO manages and does not micromanage. Communicate that knowledge to the electorate. Also know that you will have very little power as a single voice on the council (not to mention you'll be a freshman member). Hopefully your political party will be in control of things so you won't be a complete lame duck. Because the council manages in the macro sense (it steers vs. rows) you have no authority to fire the current IT manager. In other words, your political future rides on this man or woman. Set up a meeting, be nice, and most importantly sell your plan to him (or her) before the election heats up.

4. Understand the bureaucratic environment. Government is based on the basic idea that money needs to be spent and not saved. Public managers work hard at the end of the fiscal year to not leave much on the books in order to prevent losing their funding the next year. So know that there will no support among the city managers to go after cost saving alternatives. The public will have to demand they investigate such avenues.

6. Run an effective grass roots campaign using your IT skills as a foundation. Get the voter registration list from your registrar in disk format. Put it into a mysql database with voter history (priming data). Take your message door-to-door effectively, and track individual voters so you know who to call on election day. Only visit people who vote! You have a leg up on your competition due to your ability to effectively manager voter contacts.

Most of all: BE YOURSELF.

Re:Hi, I don't really have a platform...

[Eloquence]

Your attitude is one of the main reasons it's so hard to achieve anything on the political level. Here's a guy who does something on a local scale, which could be a model for others if it's successful. He asks for input from the Slashdot "community", and people from all over the world reply what their political ideas are and how they think they could be turned into practice. Ideally, the guy will listen. That's exactly the kind of thing that needs to happen, and the open-source community (of which Slashdot is, like it or not, an advocacy channel) needs to push its people into politics, or to get the knowledge to the politicians.

As for the cost savings, yes, Linux can cost more money than it saves when the transition is not carefully planned and executed. Part of the reason for that is the large number of people who "make Linux harder than it is", as Roblimo, IIRC, pointed out. There is a variety of extremely simple graphical e-mail clients. Konqueror or Mozilla are both web browsers that can be used by almost anyone (whereas Konqueror can be set up easily by anyone with half a clue to look and act like IE). It's exactly the Internet client problems that are mostly solved on the desktop. Don't invent problems that do not exist. Surely you could set up mutt and procmail on a library computer, but then don't be surprised if people point and laugh.

But cost savings are not the main reason to move to Linux. The main reason are the long-term benefits of source code openness, which includes easy expandability, which is a major plus, because many additions by anyone from government agencies to corporations will be returned into the pool of open source software, to the benefit of all -- the more open-source software (GPL) is used, the more powerful this effect becomes (and there's the obvious "given enough eyes .." security/stability advantage, which also increases exponentially). Also, schools and libraries will not have to deal with unmanageable obsolescence cycles which are deliberately created by the Wintel duopoly. OSS will make computers better, more easy-to-use and cheaper. You should support those trying to make that difference, or become one of them.

Sorry, but

[madenosine]

It does not seem that many people have realised the fact that this man is a troll; the story is fake just look at his posting history. Christ...is it really that hard to see? I must say, however, that it is a good and pretty funny one.