Slashdot Mirror
New York City Examines Law Mandating Open Source
An anonymous submitter writes "The New York Council held a hearing on the 'SOFTWARE WARS.' The Select Committee on Technology in Government, chaired by Council Member Gale A. Brewer (D-Manhattan), held a public hearing Tuesday on software procurement practices by state and local governments. Representatives from the City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Microsoft, as well as numerous local software companies testified. Newsforge is carrying the testimony at the hearing of Tony Stanco, Director of The Center of Open Source & Government." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
I hope this story hits the mainstream news wires soon. As a volunteer firefighter 10 minutes from the City line, it's depressing and disturbing to hear that the City's funds are so mismanaged that eight FDNY firehouses have to be closed. Maybe the UFA (the firefighters' union) should pick up on this story and run some numbers past the mayor and the council.
Go Tony!
Unix: Where
The sticking point is how to define what is most suitable, and to ensure that all options are considered (often they are not).
Shrugging it off with "it's as easy as that" is rather naive - it assumes civil servants are perfectly informed and completely neutral, something that unfortunately is not the case in the real world.
Seeing how the city is almost broke and getting no support from Albany.(I live in NYC) And thinking about raising taxes or levies as they call it. I guess purchasing expensive MS products is out of the question. So I guess opensource would be the logical choice.
I'd agree, but it's impossible to legislate common sense. Especially in a country such as the USA where it seems to be a rare commodity item.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
I thought we had already discussed this with the bill in Oregon. To me the best comment out of the whole discussion is the one about making open standards mandatory rather than oss. Looks like politicians do not read /. !!
MOST of thse closed firehouses are in northern Brooklyn in East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bed-Sty, etc... These firehouses date from when these were the most popular neighborhoods in Brooklyn (1880-1920). When many were built, southern areas like Bensonhurst still had farms. Today, this part of Brooklyn is among the worst ghetto in the city and the population is far less than it once was. Even though the population density of Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, and the southern neighborhoods have grown tenfold, they have not received further fire coverage.
These neighorhoods will have fire coverage in line with the city average.
I believe one firehouse is being closed downtown, a relic from when more people lived there. It could be argued that trend is reversing (I mean, look at the price for an apartment on the Lower East Side, a total ghetto just 10 years ago)... But most of those firehouses just don't need to be there.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
We use Groupwise in my agency, which is much lower cost than exchange, since Novell cuts us some pretty good deals on state contract. But we need to communicate to other people - the central IT agency for the city currently mandates that we maintain an exchange gateway, since there is no anti-virus product I can find that can scan attachments in groupwise
That's funny. We found one. Not sure the exact product, but we do use one. In any event according to Novell in Groupwise 6.5 you can have it filter Junk mail and viruses. Plus when all of those exchange servers got beat up thanks to Code Red, our Groupwise server was fine. Also, for your blackberries, could you not just set up forwarding rules that forward the mail and then the mail back from the blackberry could be sent thru their smtp? I mean if your worried about e-mail security, your probably should not be using a Blackberry anyway.
I agree about Open Source not being mandated though. There are lots of good products out there that deserve attention as well. I am all for using the best tool for the job period. Just like you can't use a hammer for everything, you can't use Open Source for everything either.
Gorkman
But most of those firehouses just don't need to be there.
First, that's simply not true. Fire houses, at least in NYC, tend to be spaced in such a way that minimizes response time for the whole city, not just one neighborhood, regardless of population density or income level. Traffic is still traffic. Also, if the rig in your local firehouse is out on a job, and you report a fire in your house, the engine that reports comes from the next-nearest firehouse, and the entire battalion, and eventually the entire borough, fans out to fill the gaps. Fewer fire houses farther apart breaks the whole system down, and can, in theory, lead to higher response times borough-wide.
But besides all that, you're missing my point. This is a way to save the city a few bucks. What's better -- closed firehouses and slot machines in the city (another wonderful Bloomberg idea), or open firehouses and open source?
Unix: Where
Ghetto areas have the most fires. Today few houses in good neighborhoods go up in flames because of new saftey features.
Poor areas, areas with lots of abandoned building in particular, are vulnerable to kids and lunatics who get a thrill out of setting things on fire. When abandoned buildings go up, they have a tendency to spread quickly and create problems.
In middle class areas, 70% of firemen's duties are acting as first responders and paramedics for anything from car accidents to gas leaks and medical emergencies. the other 30% is divided between code inspections and fires.
I'd be hesitant to close firehouses in a city the size of new york, particularly when you consider the size and waste of other city agencies...
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
...job security for Union Members trumps fire safety...
No, job security for UFA members is fire safety. More firefighters on duty means quicker response time. Quicker response time means more lives saved.
This isn't quantum physics. You cook a turkey at 350 degrees (Fahrenheit). Your average house fire cooks somewhere around 1200 degrees. The quicker the FD gets to that fire and gets people out, the greater the chance of survival for the occupants. The farther the firefighters have to travel to get to the fire scene -- especially in NYC traffic -- the lower the occupants' chance of survival.
As a side note, IIRC, the city has already closed the Bronx borough fire inspector's office. This means more arsons will go undetected, because lots of evidence can be destroyed in the 20 minutes it'll take for an inspector from Manhattan to trek up there. That means higher home insurance rates for everyone, not just NYC or even NYS residents.
Unix: Where
Arguing that the OO doc format is more closed than Word because the Abiword developers haven't implemented a filter for the former is visual misdirection, at best.
it is illegal for the US Government to fund projects that directly compete with commercial interests.
It would be illegal for the government to start it's own software company and undercut MS in the market; it isn't illegal for the government to mandate the use of open source in it's own operations. Such mandates do not 'compete' with commercial interests in any way, shape or form.
It's irrelevant if MS were to lose out on a potential 'market' because of this. The government isn't required to provide 'markets' to corporate interest using taxpayer dollars.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?