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

Posted by timothy on 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.'"

3 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. I'd be satisfied with... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd be satisfied with a preference for whatever actually works for the given requirement, for the least amount of money. FOSS, proprietary, whatever.

    1. Re:I'd be satisfied with... by Ichijo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Evaluate software not just on purchasing/licensing costs but also on the cost of installing the software, migrating old documents, and training users, and the time required to complete day-to-day tasks. Because sometimes FOSS is only free if your time is worth nothing.

      And require open standards.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  2. Consider incidentals by l2718 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Taxpayers should not be paying for someone's pet cause ... Proper action would be to mandate the government to use the best software for the task at hand ... Let the technical merits decide.

    I'm sorry, but while technical merits should be paramount, they are not the only consideration. Public contracting is not an exact science, and it is entirely appropriate to have non-technical considerations tip the scales in close cases. So while Free Software should not be mandatory, legislating a preference for it makes perfect sense.

    Furthermore, there are considerations beyond the needs of a specific project and tender. Free Software has an externality: when the government (as a customer) requests modifications and improvements (and pays for them to be created), everyone benefits. For example, when my university has Blackboard Inc fix a bug (or improve the software) only Blackboard captures the value (when they sell their software to the next customre). If we were using Moodle, every other Moodle user would automatically benefit. Had we opted for Moodle, we'd also benefit from fixes made by other universities.