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Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration
VeniDormi writes "I just found out that House Bill 2892 was introduced in the Oregon House of Representatives by Representative Phil Barnhart. The summary: 'Requires state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. Sets other requirements for acquiring software.'
Rep. Barnhart has a few comments on the bill." A NewsForge story has more information, including some words from Rep. Barnhart.
It'd be interesting to know what Oregon's northern neighbors in Redmond think about this.
It's a baaare faced challenge to the quality of M$'s products.
Go OREGON!
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
This means nothing. This is a no-tooth bill that has nothing to do with increasing open source usage, but merely placating a bunch of lobbyists.
Here's how it goes when an agency is looking to buy software:
- They decide what they want, and which vendor to get it from. They seek a budget for it.
- The rules say they must let contractors compete on the bid, so they put out an RFP (request for proposals).
- They word the questions in the RFP in such a way as to make sure that the only product that will be acceptable is the one they originally planned on.
I see this day in and day out. Just this morning I read an RFP. They were looking for an RMS system to complement their police dispatching system.
The first requirement was: Must work with the existing dispatching system.
Well, the only RMS out there that works with the dispatching system is the one from the vendor of the 20 year old dispatching system. The whole RFP process is a beurocratic circle jerk.
Now if all the systems were 'open source', would it make a difference? Not really, since we'd be unlikely to rewrite our RMS for each and every bid. An open format for data transmission would be nice, but a pipe dream, since every agency in the country has their own way of managing the data.
So while this is a nice warm and fuzzy bit of legislation, it wont affect how the system works at all. If they put out a contract for a bunch of OS's, it'd read "Must support DirectX 9" or some such to pigeonhole it into what they already decided on.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And on the border of Oregon and Washington State, the tanks are massing for an invasion of Oregon.
The Govenor of Washington was heard to refer to this operation as "Operation Make Bill Richer"...
www.eFax.com are spammers
Requires state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. Sets other requirements for acquiring software.
In many cases where highly specialized applications are required, the consideration of opensource alternatives will show that while linux has multiple nice desktops, multiple nice office suites, multiple nice browsers, multiple nice email clients... it still has a number of fronts to work on.
When you compare all enterprise commercial apps against the most mature and most turnkey opensource ones, you'll find a lot of projects with good intentions but little functionality compared to commercial offerings.
The free software world is all about code and component reuse and sharing, and the attitude of 'hope someone can find use for this thing that I wrote - if it doesn't meet your needs or doesn't work, let me know and I might choose to do something about it... better yet, can you help? Here's the sourcecode'
If the government is committed to hiring software developers to *MAKE* opensource software work by *ENHANCING* it and *EXTENDING* it's functionality, then... HORRAY! We all Win.
This is especially true in government applications where the code is 99% custom anyways.
Eg; I work for a company that writes and sells computer dispatching and records systems to cops and firemen. I see no CAD systems on sourceforge. They simply dont exist, and wont because much of the code required is very site specific and customized. It's a niche market that open source, for all its virtues, cannot fill.
Now if they want to run Red Hat Advanced Server on the backend instead of HP-UX or WinNT (which is what we offer now), more power to 'em, but it's still a few hundred bucks in a half-million dollar contract. A bit like pissing into niagra falls to warm it up.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The issue is what you can do when you find a gap and who benefits from plugging the gap.
In the opensource world you can either try to rally the masses or hire your own programmers to fill a gap. The new code then gets returned to the community for possible future use and refinement. (Or it may remain so unique that no one else can gain any use from it.)
In the commercial/proprietary world you usually wind up having to convince the software owner that this is a gap worth filling in. Then you have to wait through the release cycle or pay them extra to do the work for you. At the end of the day the other company owns the fix and you end up re-buying it each time you get another license/upgrade.
(If it's a customizable API then you're exactly where you were with the open source stuff we're you're paying programmers to do the work for you.)
At the end of the day you're probably going to have to pay for a programmer, it's just a question of what return you get on that investment.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
To those of you who are posting asking, "Why do they need to write a law to 'consider'" ... you are missing the real power of the law which is located in the very last section. This proposed law *mandates* as a requirement of Oregon State that the software (whether Open Source or proprietary) adhere to open and transparent formats for data storage. In other words, Microsoft Office will not be allowed unless Microsoft *chooses* to alter Office to save files in an open/transparent way.
This is entirely upto Microsoft and is completely fair in the sense that the State of Oregon is saying that open formats are a *requirement* of all software purchased for state goverment.
READ THE BILL!
No way man. In this country our elected representatives listen to "The People", not Big Business.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.