Oregon's Open Source Bill Passess Committee Hearing

Cooper Stevenson writes "Oregon's Open Source Bill HB 2892 made it through the first General Government Committee hearing and is now scheduled for a work session. From here the committee will vote on the bill and, if it passes, will go to the Ways and Means Committee where it is expected to pass to the House floor for a vote. You may find the audio feed and the opponent's written testimony here. We are scanning and posting written testimony (especially the proponents for which there is plenty) as quickly as possible so check back in periodically."

Comments

This bill still has a long way to go

[Pettifogger]

I spent a session working in the Oregon Legislature. This bill still has a long, long way to go. Even if it gets to the floor this time, it's still going to have to go over to the Senate, which is going to go through the whole process over there, joint committee, and so on.

I don't think a lot of people know that the Legislature here only meets in odd-numbered years and that they start in January and usually wrap everything up in July, hopefully by the 4th. This bill is coming out a little late, and it'll probably be rushed at the end of the session. Here's where it gets interesting- lots of strange, strange things happen late in the session when everyone wants to leave. Bills get killed, sometimes they're deliberately allowed to die for "lack of time" and all sorts of other weird stuff happens. So just watch and wait.

And software lobbyists aside (I'm sure they're swarming over on State Street) what makes this even more interesting is the severe budget crunch going on in Oregon. In a nutshell, there's no sales tax and lots of other fees and such are pretty low. This was mostly countered by the income tax, but since Oregon has the highest unemployment in the country, state revenues are in the toilet, programs are being cut, and it seems like there are almost daily protests over at the Capitol. Given that the Legislature is under a lot of pressure because of that, the multi-million dollar question is whether they're going to allow open-source to save some programs or succumb to lobbyist pressure not to. Stay tuned, this is going to be worth watching.

How hard they're fighting this?

[Baloo Ursidae]

I saw two opposing views that were nearly identical from two agencies with a history of astroturfing (and by the looks of the ISC response, I don't think they even looked at it other than to fill in the blanks of a form letter), and one opinion from the Department of Administrative Services that doesn't seem to realise that spyware is a bad thing (second point under "How this bill changes law.")

Given the opposing response, and knowing Oregon's tendancy try and go against the ignorant, I'd say this has a good chance of passing (even if it won't go through congress anywhere nearly as fast as the 70 MPH speed limit bill, which the Oregon House of Representatives passed today). This shouldn't stop Oregonians from contacting thier congresscritters about this matter.