NYC Councilman (and Open Source Developer) Submits Bill Establishing Open Source

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 29, 2014 @06:43AM from the say-fellas-we-could-give-the-money-back dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer (912032) writes "New York City Council Member Ben Kallos (KallosEsq), who also happens to be a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developer, just introduced legislation to mandate a government preference for FOSS and creating a Civic Commons website to facilitate collaborative purchasing of software. He argues that NYC could save millions of dollars with the Free and Open Source Software Preferences Act 2014, pointing out that the city currently has a $67 million Microsoft ELA. Kallos said: 'It is time for government to modernize and start appreciating the same cost savings as everyone else.'"

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Call it the hartbleed act by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-29 07:10 · Score: -1, Flamebait

So, you want FOSS, OpenSSL is FOSS. Look where that got us. You know who isn't vulnerable to it? Anyone who is running IIS. FOSS doesn't mean cheaper or better. It just transfers the cost from licensing to integration and maintenance. People who look to free find out exactly what the cost is, and it definitely isn't free.