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

Simple: "Show me the money?"

[Uttles]

What do voters care about? Taxes. It's that simple. So, you want to get elected, voters want lower taxes. How do you react to this situation? Find a way to lower, or at least not increase, taxes. Open source solutions are free. Maintenance of such systems, contrary to what M$ heads would have you believe, is about the same cost, maybe even less (because once it's running, it JUST WORKS.) Now, let's follow along to make a logical conclusion:

You want to be on the council.
The voters don't want to pay as much tax.
You want to use something that's free for IT purposes.
Tell the voters that using free software would reduce costs!
The voters will automatically imply that your action of reducing costs will lead to lowered taxes and BAM!! you're elected.

Good luck!

Re:Simple: "Show me the money?"

[4of12]

Don't forget to mention in passing that the open source free software has been built up over many years in the world's leading universites and government institutions and it's high time that our governments took advantage of its investment in these quality resources. Otherwise, most voters will confuse free software with free beer ware and the crap they've downloaded for "free" off the internet that gave them a virus and nags them constantly to send money to a purported author.

But OSS is but one very small part of the total equation of running and getting elected to local government.

The big thing is, indeed, "show me the money". First, taxes. Second, visible services, like how many hours you stand in line at the Motor Vehicle Department to get a new drivers license.

What impresses voters are politicians that fix potholes, pass ordinances against noise, are in favor of police, firefighters and teachers.

Other measures are more controversial and if you want to get elected you'd best steer clear of divisive issues (such as zoning of a megastore) where 90% of the people are on one side of the issue and 90% of the money is on the other side of the issue. You can take care of those according to your conscience once you've made it into office.

Re:Simple: "Show me the money?"

[drunkmonk]

I don't think that taxes are really the focus of a city that size... I'd push that the money could be used to fix the big pothole on Second Street, to build a new park or add a new wing onto the local high school's science building or whatever. Offer them something tangible, which will not only make them happier but improve the overall value of the city.

It's not appropriate

[blamanj]

As a citizen, do you think I want to know what brand asphalt you're going to use to fill the potholes? No, I just want to get it done. Details like that are for you and your staff to work out.

Re:It's not appropriate

[ChaosDiscordSimple]

As a citizen, do you think I want to know what brand asphalt you're going to use to fill the potholes?

Actually, if some of the asphalt vendors have "Asphalt User License Agreements" that restrict the local government's usage of the asphalt, expose the government to random audits and potentially crippling fines for violations of the license agreement, I would be very interested in my local goverments choice in asphalt.

(And since I suspect that agreements like this actually exist for some government construction projects, I really do want politicians discuss such issues.)

Re:It's not appropriate

[blamanj]

But what about the voting citizens? They're alot smaller, some of them do care what kind of asphalt you use.

Invite all three of them to a public hearing.

Seriously, this is not a campaign issue. It is a means to an end, e.g., if I can save money, make govt. run more efficiently, etc., then you campaign on those items as issues and when or if you get into a discussion on details, then you bring up the processes and techniques you'll use.

Indirectly?

[benedict]

I suspect that talking about "open source" won't
mean a lot to your constituency. However, you can
say that you have ideas about how to streamline
governmental IT budgets without cutting services.

A more subtle point is that open source improves
openness. Using open file formats and protocols
protects the government and the public from vendor
lock-in. It also improves the chance that government archives will still be accessible in
the middling and distant future. I don't know
how you can make these points sound-bite-friendly,
but it's worth thinking about.

State the problem. Show tha Linux is the solution.

[skoda]

Fundamentally, you need to be pushing a solution to a problem people care about. Or you need to provide a better way of doing things, that is worth the hassle of accepting. Change for change's sake is scary to voters. And if you're trying to push Linux just because it's l33t and r00lz, then quit now; you're just wasting people's time.

If you can demonstrate that using Linux will...
- Reduce computer costs and free up more money for education...
- Make it easier for kids to get computers, to play and learn with (and so develop future job skills)...
- Have a proven track record of being more secure against attackers...
- Will enable computers and related services to more available, more quickly to e.g. rural areas than otherwise...

...then you've got something you can sell to non computer-geek voters.

You need to simply identify how using OSS well improve your would-be constituents' lives.

It's the budget

[metis]

I'd say the most important way you can effectively sell Open Software is as a cost saving measure.

• reduced cost of licencing
• reduced cost of licence compliance
• reduced cost of dealing with security
• reduced waste in government offices (open software tends to have less feature-creep, which means less time doing stuff that shouldn't be done at all (like writing your memos in three columns).

Issues of freedom come second. The problem is they are more abstract, difficult to grasp, and non-local. And you are not running for President so your voters might not care about your opinions about copyright and copyleft.

Of course if you were running in Berkeley, things might be different ;-) but you aren't.

How is this a municipal issue?

[EisPick]

Would you vote for a landscaper whose campaign speeches were treatises on the merits of hardwood mulch over pine bark mulch? Or an auto mechanic who promised to improve the performance of the city's vehicle fleet by switching to synthetic motor oil?

I know I wouldn't.

If you're running for city council, stick to the top issues in municipal government: schools, taxes, crime, etc.

At most you might say something like "as information technology becomes increasingly important to the successful managment of any business or government, our city council would benefit by having a member who understands how to apply IT tools to improve the function of city government." But leave it at that.

Quite simple, really

[AugstWest]

How do I make that concept accessible and interesting to 40,000 citizens?

Use puppets. MAke one of them act mean, make the other one act kind, and make sure that the kind one explains the moral at the end.

Barring that, most voters won't pay attention.

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.

Re:It's a different kind of accessibility...

[arkanes]

IMO, a (good) secretary is much more likely to be able to handle staroffice or any other wierd thing you thow at them than thier boss will be. It's the VP who doesn't really USE his computer for anything besides e-mail and powerpoint that refuses to learn something new, not the secretary who spends all day actually USING thier computer and probably can adjust to a new word processor in no time.

Steve Irwin vs. Linux

[Bonker]

Give me a map and compass, drop me into the Amazon Rainforest, and I will be lost immediately too. But that Crocodile Hunter guy on TV would figure out where he is, and start walking. Might take him a week, but he would find his way out, while I would still be trying to reboot the compass.

Crikey! If you look ovah here, you can see a primo example of the dread Linux Hacker. 'e's a dangerous brute, but ain't 'e bayutiful?!

I can get this close to 'im because I respect 'is terrortree. You're a notty hacker! Yes you are! He's a dangerous wonk, alright, but I'm okay because I'm a trained profeshun'al.

Let's all remember the the Linux Hacker is an endangud species. Paoching and biggah predatas like the fanged Microsoft encroach on 'is terrortree more and more each yeah. If we want to keep these bayutiful creatuhs around, we gotta protect 'em!

Who are you kidding?

[FallLine]

When was the last time that such minutia actually changed your vote one way or the other unless it directly affected you? Probably never.

Even if you THINK you do, I doubt you really do. In order to make an informed decision on these matters must spend SOME time learning the background and the difference between the competing alternatives. Even with an issue like Open Source, there is considerable debate in the technical community about whether or not it actually saves money and it's got to be even harder for the average person to make heads or tails of it. It's not as if there's a simple authoritative source you can go to that says Open Source > Closed Source. It may be trivial to discover that the software itself takes money to actually purchase, but finding out the actual support costs, training, quality of the software, and other elements takes a lot of time and intuition. Speaking for myself, I'd actually be opposed to this kind of adoption, especially in a government agency.

Now you're going to do this kind of research for each and every little item? Asphalt? Shovels? Paper? Paper clips? It may sound ridiculous, but I doubt software costs more than .5% of the local government costs. All these decisions take time, far too much time for the average voter to concern themselves with. We have public officials and representatives for a reason.

This argument is especially ridiculous when you consider that the kinds of day to day payroll decisions made by managers have a far greater impact and cost far more. For instance, would you rather have an experienced admin run NT or a bunch of clowns running Linux? I know which I'd pick. Yet it's blatantly obvious that we can't effectively engage in this kind of oversight.