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Texas Hearings On Open Source Bill
fusion812 writes "Senate Bill 1579 is proposed Texas state legislation that would require state agencies to consider 'open source software' when purchasing computer software. The bill has been introduced in the Senate, referred to committee, and is awaiting a schedule date for a hearing." Here's some more information from EFF Austin; fusion812 supplies a summary of the bill's provisions as well as a Real Audio sample of the provided testimony, both below. Also, see this report on NewsForge for some juicy quotes.
A sample recording of testimony can be heard here: http://www.Senate.state.tx.us/ram/archive/2003/may /050803StAffpm.ram
More information: Texas Senate Bill 1579
Senate Bill 1579 proposes that, for all new software acquisitions, a state agency shall:
1. consider acquiring open source software products in addition to proprietary software products;
2. except as provided by Subdivisions (4) and (5), acquire software products primarily on a value-for-money basis;
3. provide justification whenever a proprietary software product is acquired instead of open source software;
4. avoid the acquisition of products that do not comply with open standards for interoperability or data storage;
5. 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."
A sample recording of testimony can be heard here: http://www.Senate.state.tx.us/ram/archive/2003/may /050803StAffpm.ram
More information: Texas Senate Bill 1579
Senate Bill 1579 proposes that, for all new software acquisitions, a state agency shall:
1. consider acquiring open source software products in addition to proprietary software products;
2. except as provided by Subdivisions (4) and (5), acquire software products primarily on a value-for-money basis;
3. provide justification whenever a proprietary software product is acquired instead of open source software;
4. avoid the acquisition of products that do not comply with open standards for interoperability or data storage;
5. 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."
provide justification whenever a proprietary software product is acquired instead of open source software;
I have always been of the opinion that the correct tool should be chose for the task at hand, be that tooling open or proprietary I really dont care.
I get concerned when I see clauses such as those above when there is no corresponding clause for justifying Open source choice over proprietary. Forcing adoption of Open Source thru legisaltion is every bit as bad, if not worse as the methods MS used to gain dominance.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Hardly. It would allow companies spend in areas other than software, or even to (gasp) hire programmers-- thus putting more programmers to work.
This merely means that the software dollar isn't spent on licensing and (read mostly Microsoft) marketing, but rather on specific goals that meet company or individual needs.
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Open Source software is not necessarily Linux. There are many Open Source programs that run on other oprerating systems.
Open Source should not be "required". I can just imagine how some mid-level government manager would feel being forced to consider OpenOffice (for example) when he just wants to buy Office and be done with it -- word would start to circulate about his crappy experience, Open Source in general would suffer, and anti-OSS camp has more ammo.
I get really scared when I start hearing people who believe in freedom so much they are going to force you to be free (at a metaphorical gunpoint). Just because *I* like that I can get workalike functionality of thousands of $$s of software, doesn't mean I should force people to use it. Free will rules. Of course, government should *want* to use free software anyway, to save our money. But don't force them.
while I'm sure that this IS a troll, i'll bite because I'm waiting on a Solaris upgrade that'll take a while...
if OSS will completely stall the world economy, then why hasn't it already ? Sendmail ? Apache ? BIND ? these things essentially run the internet, having more use than any other of its closed source counterparts, by an astronomically high rate.
please explain how OSS will stall the economy. if you have no response, then my idea of it being a troll may have been true.
Actually I think Bruce Sterling has it right - open source is "free, like a puppy". It needs plenty of care and feeding, so it's better that the IT budget gets spent on people to do that instead of supporting huge licensng fees.
I'd like to see a state submit a bill that bans proprietary file formats (i.e. Word, Excel) and communication protocals (i.e. File and Printer Sharing, COM) that lock you in and make you dependent on one vendor. Even if there was little chance that the bill would pass, I'd like to see Microsoft exposed for the greedy, anti-consumer monopolist that they are when they turn out in force to try to kill the bill. Microsoft would demonstrate how they want you to become completely dependent on them so you have no freedom to choose your CPU architecture, operating system or vendor. They only care about their revenue stream and don't give a shit about what's in your best interest, only theirs
They would be in a catch-22, where either they choose to fight it and damage their reputation, or let it pass and be forced to open up and document their file formats and protocols.
Microsoft's in a similar catch-22 with enforcing their licenses with audits. Either they allow piracy and lose money, or aggressively attack piracy to boost their revenue and piss off companies that then move to Linux, reducing their income, market share and mindshare.
I love it...
Just focus on (1) and (3) - this is legalese for writing two paragraphs to say why you are selecting the proprietary system you want to purchase.
Actually this is more important than you realize. If you are innocent of a crime then of course providing a solid alibi is the best way to get yourself off the suspects list. If you are guilty of a crime then providing a false alibi is often the worst thing you can do. Saying nothing at all is usually better. Why? Because as soon as you say something the police have something to work on, and at the very least will probably be able to show that you lied.
Likewise there is no way to attack the government's reasons for acting if they do not tell you want those reasons were. A law like this effectively forces beurocrats to give an alibi. If they are faking it, then critics will have something to work on.
So should all people agree with each other, so as not to cause any potential trouble?
I disagree with the opinion expressed by MisterFancypants (and agree more with Rooktovin's reply above) but I cannot prove definately (note I cannot, yet, doesn't mean I can't in the furute with more thought, or someone else can), because whichever thought-process I use for this problem, the result can change depending on assumptions used at the beginning, I just get a preference based on prefered assumptions and behaviour.
This is 'Slashdot: news for nerds, stuff that matters' not 'Sheep-dot: Linux is good, because that is geek-cool'.
Here's why. With all the DMCA, Super DMCA and software patent legislation floating around it would be nice to have some open source laws on the books. Maybe some conflicts in legislation might help some law makers to see how these laws impact open source. "What do you mean we can't use our XYZ software anymore?" "What do you mean we can only get an update for XYZ software from a foreign FTP site?"
"There may be no price tag attached to the aquisition of some Open Source software but it costs to support and maintain it."
Right, like Windows installs itself, runs flawlessly, and every time it breaks a little man from Microsoft pops out of the air beside your computer and fixes it for you.
If you took the money you didn't spend on buying Windows and stashed it in a high yield investment account, it would probably cover paying a large percentage of your IT staff, especially since you could fire all the ones doing nothing but running around and rebooting crashed PCs and wiping spyware by having to reinstall the OS.
Beep beep.
Trust me, a friend of mine's company decided to go with an Oracle DB and was talking about how it would let him do all this stuff out of the box, etc. I was working on a project of the same scale and used PostgreSQL. Needless to say, we both had consultants hired to implement the same type of system -- both charged about the same (my OSS guy was cheaper -- thanks Rich!) but we weren't out 700,000 for the Oracle stuff.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
*bzzzt* Wrong, most software developers do not work on software that is sold, they work on stuff that buisnesses need to, well, do buisness.
How many developers do you know?
How many developers do you know that develop software that is sold?
QED
That's not about OSS, that's the way the industry has always gone. Developers (and software companies) have been being put out of jobs since long before OSS came into the spotlight. There used to be a competitive market in word processors for MS platforms. Now, all those companies that made those products are nothing but a dim rememberance. Remember Stacker? Remember Borland? Remember DRI?
Or, on a more personal note, I once worked for a company that made PC-based point-of-sale systems; we charged a couple of thousand dollars, but that included updates and support. We were very competitive in the market at that time. Then along came a company that sold a competitive product for a couple of hundred bucks (with no support or updates, of course), and our company took a major hit, and had to lay off most of the workforce (including me). But that's just standard free-market capitalism -- offer what appears to be a better product and/or what appears to be a better price, and steal your competitors' customers, maybe even put them out of business.
As for OSS, companies like Trolltech or Sleepycat are using it as a competitive advantage. And last I heard, competition was supposed to be good for the world economy! Of course, it can be painful for individuals who find themselves being out-competed (see last paragraph), but it's still overall a good thing.
The thing you're complaining about has nothing to do with OSS per se; OSS is simply a sign that software is moving from being an expensive specialty market with high margins to being a large commodity market with razor-thin margins. Overall, I think that's a good thing, even though there's obviously going to be a lot of disruption involved.
Finally, consider my first job as a software developer: I got a contract to write a quicksort for a new machine. Nowadays, quicksort is included in the standard C library. Let us take a moment to weep for all those poor software developers who no longer have an opportunity to make money writing quicksort. And then let us move back to the realm of sanity. I don't want to write quicksorts for the rest of my life. I'm tired of re-inventing wheels, just because the older wheels are all proprietary. If you can't find some productive arena to apply your expertise, then maybe you are in the wrong business. Software developers aren't owed a living any more than buggy-whip manufacturers are. When the market moves on, it's time to move with it.
This is not affirmative action. This is simply a bill which requires government officials to consider using FOSS and justify their reasons for not using it. It does not handicap proprietary software relative to FOSS. It simply requires these guys to consider FOSS.
It is in no way analagous to affirmative action. It is analagous to requiring that colleges look at all of the applications sent to them, and not throw applications in the trash if "African American" is checked off next to race.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I love when people spout off on things they THINK they know, but have no real clue!! AA is simply a requirement that a group/business/school/etc that wish to recieve FEDERAL Government money reflect the community they are in if possible. This means that if you are in El Paso, Texas, employ 1000 peopl and none are Hispanic, you are not reflecting the community. If you have 10 openings come up(none are specialized) and still do not hire any Hispanics, it is apparent you are purposefully not hiring Hispanics (Again, change groups depending on you location). However, if you are a Nuclear Power facility, and there are only 3 applicants qualified as Nuclear Engineers, you are likely to hire one of those 3 regardless of their demographic because of the highly specialized nature of the job. Businesses/Schools have made the goals of AA into "quotas" to avoid responsibility for actually being diverse!
Money taken from me in the form of taxes (and the state of Texas has gotten quite a bit from me in the form of sales taxes in the years I lived there) has a different set of responsibilities attached than money being spent by a private enterprise. General Welfare, all that.
...
The thing about using open source code, and in particular when necessary paying for improvements to it, is that it's hard to see when this does *not* benefit the general welfare, assuming that the State in its usual infinite wisdom does not care to save / not spend other people's money in the first place.
Given that government agencies (hey, same is true at large corporations) like to spend money (and face disincentives to not spend at least up to their alloted budgets), let's say they're going to spend the same total money for particular tasks on either a) proprietary software + customization / integration and supportor b) Freely available software + customization / integration and support. That may be fanciful (despite optimism and propaganda on both sides), but I think it's actually a conservative guess.
At the end of the day / project / whatever, there's some code (still in existence) and whatever additions have been made to it. If there are additions that are somehow tied to the state government itself (ties to certain databases or weird data formats, etc) and they're modular enough, there could even be some cross-project advantages.
Also, one key advantage I've not noticed anyone mention in this thread is the fact that open source code (whether the FSF calls it Free or not) can be audited and justified a lot more easily than closed source apps. For one thing, I'd like to see tax-funded software be aggressively bid on; if code is open by policy, then improving it etc can be chased after by programmers / small software firms. It doesn't have to mean switching entire software systems
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
There is a major flaw in your reasoning, and I will try to demonstrate it:
If I chose open source software I download a free copy (...) If I chose proprietary software I buy a copy
My point is that the person who actually furbishes the office rarely purchases the software himself, and it's hardly possible that he/she will actually download anything. In a typical case, he/she orders it to a third company, as he/she does it with telephones, plumbing, eletrical wiring etc. So you ALWAYS hire a subcontractor to do all this. A part of the subcontractor fee will probably go to foreign companies. That's inevitable. But if the "foreign included" solution will be cheaper than the "foreign not-included" solution, why not choose the first one? After all, the whole idea of free market is based on that. So the only question is whether state instutitions choose the truly cheaper (=with lower TCO) solution. Law should force them to do this, but in my opinion law should be blind on the proprietary/non-proprietary software question just as it should be blind on the racial/gender/religion etc. issues.
proprietary/non-proprietary is hardly comparable to race/gender/religion issues! the first two are a matter of birth and not choice, the last is simply irrelevent in any function government is supposed to be involved in.
If the state uses open source software, they have guaranteed there will be continued support and they won't have to upgrade until they are ready, even if this means hiring programmers themselves.
If they use proprietary software then information such as whether or not I've paid my taxes, showed up in court, etc are at the whim of a commercial entitity that can suddenly decide to say "no" one day or can go out of buisness taking their code with them. Proprietary companies have an interest in making you use more of their products and staying with their products, so they usually do not provide a ready means of tossing their products away in the future. These are facts not matters of preference. These are my tax dollars, and quite frankly scarlet, I'd rather not spend them when the superior or equivelent solutions tend to be free.