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NYC Councilman (and Open Source Developer) Submits Bill Establishing Open Source
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.'"
I guess we should be glad there are no Visual Basic programmers on the City Council.
You just wait and see how much funding he gets in his re-election campaign (plus how much more 'the other guy'(tm) will get).
How dare he break free from his corporate overlords.
And I'll tell you why:
Taxpayers should not be paying for someone's pet cause. Which is exactly what this is. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Proper action would be to mandate the government to use the best software for the task at hand. That might be open source software. It might be Microsoft software. Let the technical merits decide.
But "Abloobloobloo FREE BEER" is fucking retarded. Open source is not a blanket synonym for quality or usefulness. Just because something is open source does not make it awesome. Nor does lacking an initial purchase price make something cheap and clusterfuck/massive overtime free.
This reads like the right bill for ten years ago.
When Microsoft decided to turn it's back on desktop style operating systems to focus mainly on tablet-based interfaces, the only logical conclusion was for organizations that depend on the old systems to jump ship and go elsewhere.
I'd be satisfied with a preference for whatever actually works for the given requirement, for the least amount of money. FOSS, proprietary, whatever.
Money saved by the government never translates into money put back in the pocket of the tax payers.
From the proposed amendment:
I agree that we should use the right tool for the right job, but why should that exclude FOSS?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
I know it's the default in NYC (and NY in general), but I still wish some of these smarter guys would rebel and throw off the chains of the Party of Slavery. It forces me to question everything you do, even if it sounds interesting and benificial.
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
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.
Open standards is extremely important. I'd hate for all that data to be locked into Microsoft Excel format, or what have you.
While I agree that sometimes the FOSS is buggy or missing features, I do not think in this situation we should let that stop us. In fact, I would love to see NYC (and other cities across the country) agree to sponsor/contract a couple of developers each to work on whatever we need: data formatting and conversion, word processing, accounting, voting software, etc. In this way, while the FOSS is maybe not up to spec today, we can all work together on making it up to spec soon. In this way, we all pool resources, get it done correctly ONCE*, and enjoy the savings and philosophical warm and fuzzies.
(* yes I understand that long term we would probably need to continually hire developers on a contract basis to fix problems that come up, or add new features or support for new operating systems, etc., but generally speaking it would be much less impact on the budget long term -- though I also understand the political pressure currently to cut budgets rather than spend a little extra for a perk down the road.).
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.
No, just no. The quality of OSS is too bad. Well, let's not say bad per se, but it varies a lot. What you win in software licensing costs, you lose in fighting all the bugs. Too many of your support calls will be wasting your time with silly glitches.
While I admit that there are real potential benefits of some proprietary software (namely availability of training, & experienced work force in some cases), I would be happy to at least see FOSS be at least given the opportunity to be considered. Enterprise licenses can be wasteful, and governments like private organizations are starting to realize that "having someone to sue" doesn't help all to often. when things go bad.
My apologies if your post was sarcasm. Projects are at Launchpad for a reason, the packages are not ready to be included in the repositories.
I have converted many machines from Windows 8 to Mint over the last several months, leaving my contact information. Not only have I had zero calls for support, I am getting references to switch even more people over.
Assume you won't keep the software forever. Can you get your data out of it?
This is something that needs to be reconsidered with version upgrades as well. Do the new features prevent data export? Did data export go away?
Agree. It's just giving "prefered supplier" status to OSS rather than a specific company, large IT firms get similar preferential treatment because of the "nobody gets sacked for picking IBM" factor. This is why it is important to be seen as a "teir 1" provider, you don't have to look for government tenders you automatically get an invite. Someone still has to integrate all the "free" software bits into a system, IT firms will still be hired to do that and they won't miss out on a penny, they just get a "uses OSS" box to tick in the tender, however the less competent firms won't like it because it means the grip of vendor lock-in is just that little bit looser. Conceptually no different than putting "may contain nuts" on something edible.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> 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.
Moodle sure has worked well for us. Many of the custom modules we have wanted have been written by devsat other universities. When I write stuff, everyone benefits as you say. Two additional benefits with Moodle specifically are quality control and maintenance. Any patches I make to the core Moodle are QAed quite a bit through the Moodle process, so my employer (the taxpayers) have assurance that they are getting quality work for the money they pay me. The custom work on the previous LMS which ended up being unsustainable wouldn't have passed Moodle QA. Also, where we share modules with other schools, that means multiple developers at multiple organizations are able tomaintain the package over time. If I get hit by a bus and Moodle HQ gets hit by a meteor, someone at Binghamton University will still be maintaining the scantron module we use.
I keep seeing these types of stories, with people screaming about how much "Cheaper" OSS is vs. Closed Source. But very few people look past the cost of the licensing. I challenge you to replace a fully-working Microsoft environment with something OSS that provides full feature parity. Removing Exchange/Outlook is always the sticking point. You can piss and moan about standards, and Outlook client issues all day long, but the fact remains that Outlook/Exchange "just works", scales incredibly well, and integrates with Active Directory, Sharepoint, Office, Lync, etc. And yeah - companies USE these things. Users don't give a fuck about standards, about freedom, about a 'cause'. They want to do their work and come home. Active Directory group policies. Software deployment/installation. Roaming profiles. Automatic print driver installation. Recognizing and installing a plethora of "WTF" hardware for at least basic functionality (old peripherals, printers, etc.). While I applaud the efforts of the OSS community and the desire to build enterprise software, Microsoft rules the desktop for a reason. People know it. It wasn't a huge change from 95 to 98 to 2K to XP to Win7. The basic paradigm was there. Start, Programs, whatever. The application software and the "open standards" underneath simply do not matter to most organizations, because they and nearly every one of the agencies they interact with ALSO use Office formats, or PDF. They don't give a damn about Open Document formats. They don't care about sendmail standards. They don't care about RFCs. They care that they can do their job, to use the information they need, and then deliver it to their colleagues, bosses, etc. Replacing Win7/WIn8 with Mint is great. Install OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Fine. Get your email client connected, and you can even use DavMail to connect to Exchange. But you cannot force users to lose functionality in the name of a cause. Want to dethrone MS? It's not the damn desktop OS - it's the ecosystem that allows modern business to use one common toolset, one user name, and have stuff "just work". Hacking together Mint, sendmail/postfix, some webapp here, some kludgy mess here, a mashed up Kerberos/eDirectory ... that isn't going to get it done. What about when you go past about 50 users, and need to install new software for everyone? How about for 10,000 users? How about users that move from desk to desk, or office to office?
The costs of adminstration, upkeep, training, and the requisite specialist for the infrastructure quickly outweigh any upfront costs. Yes, Windows admins can be had cheap. A desktop admin is less spendy than a full server admin; that's fine. He can handle a large # of desktops via GPO, AD, and the tools provided.
Move out of the 90's, people. Microsoft desktops and servers aren't the BSOD shitboxes you remember. For the most part, Windows Server is stable. The desktop OS (Windows 7, I too have not totally embraced Win8) is rock solid, works well, and runs pretty much anything, with no hassle. Blaming hardware drivers, blaming users, blaming people for 'not wanting to care' - so what? Do you get worried about if your GM car uses a proprietary data bus? Do you care about the intimate details of your plumbing? No. You just want it to work.
Make F/OSS "just work" - make an easy migration path - and you'll have something.
Until then, it will continue to be purpose-driven (servers, appliances, etc.), and for those of us on the 'edges' of IT.
That model has worked very well with various universities and other agencies pitching in on Moodle, which is a framework that hosts online courses. It takes care of things like enrollments, grade reporting, etc. - everything that isn't course-specific. After a couple of years of open widespread contributions, Moodle is as good as any commercial competitor.
I think you would agree that Office 365 meets approximately none of the requirements. Consider Adobe recently decided to make all of their software subscription / cloud only. Microsoft _could_ therefore do the same with Office. Knowing that, reread this sentence:
> be independent of the goodwill of the city's computer system suppliers and the conditions imposed by these suppliers.
Take a good look at what happened in Massachusetts with OpenOffice. The CIO of Massachusetts tried to switch all state offices to open standards about 10 years ago, especially for documents, because frankly not even Microsoft can reliably read old Word or Excel or other documents. He tried to swith the state offices to OpenOffice, which at least *documents* their formats.
Microsoft then invented "OOXML", and rammed it through the ISO committees, an "open" document format that does not work and which is impossible to follow, even for Microsoft, so they could *pretend* to have an open format when filling out checklists for such govenmental guidelines. The forced adoption was so horrid that many ISO members resigned in protest.
Microsoft then tried to "dead agent" the guy, leaking information to the Boston Globe about how the CIO was involved in personal trips at taxpayer expense to cast rumors and doubt about his honesty. It turned out he was completely innocent, he paid for his own vacations and the taxpayers paid for Mass. project business trips, and he was very careful to separate them. But it was a plain old rumor mongering smear campaign, as described at http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/cio-who-brought-openoffice-massachusetts-resigns-903.
So if you're the one looking to get taxpayers off of the Microsoft monopoly, look out. They play *dirty* when it's affecting their bottom line.
Didn't read everything you said, but look at the city of Munich.
"Didn't read everything..." And so you have no idea WTF I'm talking about.
No, just no. The quality of OSS is too bad. ...
No, just no, yourself. Most commercial software quality is atrocious. All glitter with no substance. The rare exception doesn't change that. At least with OSS you have third party options to fix it.