Texas Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration

Skapare writes "The Texas Legislature now has before it a bill ( ASCII text here, PDF here), submitted by State Senator John Carona, to require the state to consider open source and open standards as part of the acquisition of software. Texas, like many other states, has a budget crisis going on. If this passes, I believe it could help the state save a lot of money. Texans need to make sure their state representatives and senators know they want this to pass."

Comments

What is the current policy?

[dirk]

With some form of this same bill being considered in several states, I have to wonder what the current policy is? Is there something in the current policy that would prevent open source from being considered? Or is it that this is just a way to ensure it is considered in every situation? If it is the latter, I'm not sure it's such a good thing. If there is nothing stopping it from being considered already, why do we need something to push for it to be used, as it would be on a level playing field with other software. I don't thing OSS should receive any more "special" consideration than any other product. After all, we would rail against a bill requiring MS products to be considered.

Re:What is the current policy?

[jbolden]

Often states and state agencies have regulations and legislation which require all sorts of properties from various "bidders" on contracts. By explicitly allowing for open source these regulations might be nullified when considering open source projects.

For example lets say Texas requires that all software be purchased from companies that pay Texas sales tax. Can they use Apache?

Re:What is the current policy?

[TopShelf]

"Unfortunately, requisitions are always written so that only the program they want will work"

That's an awfully broad statement - any vendor selection process that starts from the vendor's perspective is doomed to budget bloat and ultimate dissatisfaction. What is really needed is not a mandate that such-and-such software is considered, but more of a mandate that governments (just like businesses) need qualified systems analysts to drive these decisions. What's often lacking in government is the combination of technical and business expertise to make the proper match between requirements and technology.

Re:What is the current policy?

[timeOday]

I think you could make a case for a policy along the lines of "open source software should be used unless there is a compelling need for commercial software."

This is little different than requiring employees to purchase the cheapest availble airfare, or limit them to midsize car rental while traveling. The low-cost option should be the default option, unless the need to spend more is demonstrated.

Is that anticompetitive? I'm sure MS would say it is, but then the Four Seasons could balk at govt. employees not being allowed to chose a luxury suite on business travel. Ferrari could complain about discrimination in cop car purchases. It's not like "open source" is a particular company that will unfairly benefit; open source is itself a more level playing field for service contracts, custom application development, etc.

Sure, for the forseeable future there *will* be a compelling need for lots of different commercial packages. But let's at least justify the extra expense.

Why is this required?

[Captain Beefheart]

I'm seriously curious, because it just seems a little silly that even considering open source has to be legislated. Are there laws that forbid open source in this particualar situation?

Re:Why is this required?

[jc42]

Of course, pretty much all governments have laws requiring competetive bidding for government contracts. So you'd think this would be fully redundant.

But it probably isn't. There are a lot of examples of only "commercial" offering being considered.

Something I've seen on a number of web projects is a concerted effort to judge which web server to buy. While they're putting out a lot of effort installing and testing demo versions of commercial servers, I'll walk over to an idle machine, download apache, untar and compile it, and have a demo running in 15 or 20 minutes.

Usually the reaction to this is exasperation. Apache wasn't in the list of competitors, and wasn't to be tested. After all, it doesn't have a price, y'know, and there isn't an Apache Inc to buy it from, so how could they ever compare it with the other servers? The rules are to consider competitive bids, and apache didn't make a bid, so they don't have to consider it.

But in each case, the developers went with my apache server, because it was up and running. The management found they had serious opposition on their hands when they tried to get people to switch to the commercial server that they chose. The developers wanted something that worked, and had little patience for an expensive server that needed a constant babysitter.

In all seriousness, this is how things get done in many organizations. Few managers anywhere want to decrease their budget by using something that's free. It doesn't matter whether it's government or business or industry or whatever; there's a strong prediliction among managers to simply not see "free" things.

It's funny

[pclminion]

Funny how the economy goes in the toilet, and all of a sudden state governments start realizing that Microsoft is really a band of highway robbers. And this isn't the only announcement in recent weeks that a state is seriously considering switching things over to Open Source software.

I wonder if Open Source could contribute to an economic comeback in any way.

Open standards most important

[bluGill]

I don't mind them picking any closed source solution so long as it has sufficant functionality and guarenties so that they know it will work right. However I do have a problem with ANY solution that is not open standard based. microsoft doc format works okay, but it limits your ability to choose a compititor. In effect your next bid for who supplies word processors either has to have perfect microsoft compatability, or you need to account for a team to open every current document and save it in a standard that the new program can read.

By contrast if they require an open standard as default, today they can use Word, and tommorow switch to wordPerfect, and next year Staroffice might win the bid for who supplies word processing software. Even better than can be a mixture. Most people would be served just fine with kword or openoffice, but a few people need as use those features in microsft word that isn't provided in the alternatives. With a standard file format you mix and match as you wish. Today you can already provide Photoshop to those who really need the best, and Gimp to everyone, since picture formats are open. Word processing formats should be too.

Even though I mentioned file formats above, that isn't the only place where open standards are better. At walMart I can buy several different memory card readers. Some support 3 different formats, some 5, and some 6! If you happen to buy the 6 port version you can read most formats today, but not all. By contrast there is already a good open standard memory card interface: USB, and every new comptuer has it so there is no need to buy any adaptor. (Some of the memory cards read by the reader might be considered open, but they are not everywhere so it is hard to call them standard. This should be a considereation too)

Re:The Texas Legislature

[jonman_d]

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

Not sure if I missed something, but it seems like they meet a lot more than once every two years. Heck, they meet Monday! Odds are pretty good that Monday's not the once-in-two-years day, eh?

Zingers in the proposed bill

[john.r.strohm]

There is a beautiful zinger in the first section of the proposed bill. Paraphrasing slightly:

"For all new software acquisitions, a state agency shall avoid the acquisition of products that are known to make unauthorized transfers of information to, or permit unauthorized control of or modification to the state government's computer systems by, parties outside the control of the state government."

If memory serves me, Microsoft's click-wrap licenses, and the Windows XP activation process, and their auto-update processes, do EXACTLY that sort of thing.

Also note that the bill's definition of "open source software" requires "(E) freedom to make and distribute copies of the software; and (F) freedom to modify the software and to distribute the modified software under the same license as the original software."

This would seem to exclude Microsoft's "Shared Source" hogwash.

Keeping govt money local

[mgkimsal2]

I've seen some posts on here saying that 'it won't save any money', 'training costs are higher','support blah blah', etc. Using open source in some cases may save money. In most cases, however, it'll *shift* money for projects. Money that may have gone to licensing fees may be shifted to larger training budgets or more custom development work. Who will provide those services? More than likely it'll be local companies, helping to create/sustain jobs in the respective areas.

OpenOffice is a good example. While it's not a perfect replacement for MSOffice, in some organizations, it can serve reasonably well. Let's say a dept of 40 people will be upgrading from Office 97 to Office XP @ $100/seat. That's $4000. Migrating to OpenOffice for those 40 people may require days of retraining, but in reality there'd be some retraining (formal or informal) for some of those people anyway even moving to Office XP.

So, migrating from Office 97 to anything else will require *some* training. You can have more formalized training, and pay someone local to come in, or shift the bulk of that money out of the region, yet still have to provide training for some of the staff (perhaps during lunch breaks, or overtime, or whatever).

That example isn't perfect, I know, but the local services factor *needs* to be played up. Money isn't a zero-sum - it floats around in transactions. The more of those transactions a state can keep to itself, the better.