Oregon Bill Would Require Open Source Consideration

VeniDormi writes "I just found out that House Bill 2892 was introduced in the Oregon House of Representatives by Representative Phil Barnhart. The summary: 'Requires state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. Sets other requirements for acquiring software.' Rep. Barnhart has a few comments on the bill." A NewsForge story has more information, including some words from Rep. Barnhart.

That's a good start

[Visaris]

I'm pleased. Open source should be considered. And at the same time, I'm glad they didn't take things too far and require the use of open source. This is a positive influence yet doesn't seem too restrictive. Good for them :)

How does MS feel about this?

[mgessner]

It'd be interesting to know what Oregon's northern neighbors in Redmond think about this.

It's a baaare faced challenge to the quality of M$'s products.

Go OREGON!

thats all well and good

[NedTheNerd]

thats nice but we need people that know how to use compouters in goverment first :)

I would gladly welcome this in my state

[greechneb]

As Illinois is currently facing a 5 billion deficit. While I would rather first see all the pork barrel projects come to an end, I know that would never happen. That would be like Microsoft cutting Internet Explorer out of windows.

This is reasonable

[HeelToe]

I think government should be compelled^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrequired to look at all alternatives, but not forced into anythiing.

On the related topic of what license should software carry if government funds its creation, I feel like open source should be a requirement.

Of course, this opens up all the little issues like, well, if it's truly open sourced, Canada could use it against us in an upcoming war.

Re:thats all well and good

[TopShelf]

RTFA!

The open source bill -- HB 2892 -- is likely to end up in front of the General Government Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jerry Krummel, who sells Linux-based computer security systems for SAGE, Inc. when he's not busy legislating and is, therefore, likely to be a friend rather than an enemy.

I write code for government agencies

[stratjakt]

This means nothing. This is a no-tooth bill that has nothing to do with increasing open source usage, but merely placating a bunch of lobbyists.

Here's how it goes when an agency is looking to buy software:

- They decide what they want, and which vendor to get it from. They seek a budget for it.

- The rules say they must let contractors compete on the bid, so they put out an RFP (request for proposals).

- They word the questions in the RFP in such a way as to make sure that the only product that will be acceptable is the one they originally planned on.

I see this day in and day out. Just this morning I read an RFP. They were looking for an RMS system to complement their police dispatching system.

The first requirement was: Must work with the existing dispatching system.

Well, the only RMS out there that works with the dispatching system is the one from the vendor of the 20 year old dispatching system. The whole RFP process is a beurocratic circle jerk.

Now if all the systems were 'open source', would it make a difference? Not really, since we'd be unlikely to rewrite our RMS for each and every bid. An open format for data transmission would be nice, but a pipe dream, since every agency in the country has their own way of managing the data.

So while this is a nice warm and fuzzy bit of legislation, it wont affect how the system works at all. If they put out a contract for a bunch of OS's, it'd read "Must support DirectX 9" or some such to pigeonhole it into what they already decided on.

You need legislation for that...

[airrage]

I suppose I become, year after year, more of a libertarian: the less government the better. Why should one have to legislate this sort of thing?

Should we also put for legislation that governments must consider using aluminum-foil stop signs instead of metal? Isn't the stewardship of tax money impetus enough to find the "best" solution for a given municipality.

Of course the argument is two-fold: if open-source is so fantastic why does it need to be legislated -- like some sort of quota system. Yet, the flip side, which will hopefully avoid many similar posts is that their is a certain structual momentum that doesn't easily allow for change, much like racism I suppose.

When I grew up it wasn't a law that children wore bicycle helmets. Of course, helmets weren't readily available either. But you know what that made us? Stronger. Surer. More aware of our limitations. Now a child goes out into the world wearing full, active-camo kevlar and runs cycles through traffic with abandon. The point: it was better before the law. But as the parenting got worse, the laws got tougher.

So, now again, we are being parented by the government. We are not simply smart enough to decide that helmets are good thing individually -- we must have intelligencia decide it for us.

To wit, I think this is a poor idea on all fronts.

But I could be wrong ...

~Airrage ;)

Great bill, but...

[gpinzone]

Why is it important to enact a bill to say that the state should consider anything? I could work as an employee of some state controlled IT department and say, "I didn't choose the open source product because the sky is blue, but I did consider it." and be in compliance with this law (assuming it gets passed). It's a nice political statement, but nothing more.

Re:That's a good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm . . . yeah, it's so restrictive of my freedom that the state government is requiring itself to consider open source solutions.

This has nothing to do with requiring businesses to consider open source, just the state government of Oregon. It has nothing to do with your rights.

Re:I would gladly welcome this in my state

[stratjakt]

This is especially true in government applications where the code is 99% custom anyways.

Eg; I work for a company that writes and sells computer dispatching and records systems to cops and firemen. I see no CAD systems on sourceforge. They simply dont exist, and wont because much of the code required is very site specific and customized. It's a niche market that open source, for all its virtues, cannot fill.

Now if they want to run Red Hat Advanced Server on the backend instead of HP-UX or WinNT (which is what we offer now), more power to 'em, but it's still a few hundred bucks in a half-million dollar contract. A bit like pissing into niagra falls to warm it up.

Excellent Political Strategy

[Java Ape]

We've seen this before in a variety of guises. Nothing new here.

1. Politico from state with budget shortfall and M$ introduces pro-open source legislation. Total cost 30 minutes to scrawl it on a napkin and send it to his secretary for typing.
2. Politico voices strong support for bill, makes vaguely disparaging remarks about M$
3. M$ sends representative to "discuss" the issue, reiterate the fine qualities of M$ software, and generally defuse the situation.
4. Eventually there's a generous political contribution, and an offer to provide M$ products at "special discount pricing", possibly with an imdemnification against existing liscense violations.
5. Politico suddenly sees the light, disavows any allegience with open source, and dissapears in a shiny new Mercedes.

The only interesting part of this is how good a settlement M$ will have make to shut this guy up.

Gaps are everywhere

[TheConfusedOne]

The issue is what you can do when you find a gap and who benefits from plugging the gap.

In the opensource world you can either try to rally the masses or hire your own programmers to fill a gap. The new code then gets returned to the community for possible future use and refinement. (Or it may remain so unique that no one else can gain any use from it.)

In the commercial/proprietary world you usually wind up having to convince the software owner that this is a gap worth filling in. Then you have to wait through the release cycle or pay them extra to do the work for you. At the end of the day the other company owns the fix and you end up re-buying it each time you get another license/upgrade.

(If it's a customizable API then you're exactly where you were with the open source stuff we're you're paying programmers to do the work for you.)

At the end of the day you're probably going to have to pay for a programmer, it's just a question of what return you get on that investment.

Re:Will point out glaring gaps in opensource softw

[Surak]

...Is there such a thing as a FREE SOFTWARE LEECH?

That's an interesting idea... You know what, though? Even if you're using open source software, and even if you have NO coding skills whatsoever, and you're not contributing to the actual development, there are OTHER ways to help out.

• 
  Testing: The more people that run the software in a real world environment, the more bugs that are found. Even running released software will help to overturn bugs that might not otherwise be discovered, because everyone uses software a little differently and in a different environment.
  
• 
  Evangelism: A government organization or big company that runs, say OpenOffice.org, evanglizes that software by simply using the program and the file formats. Telling other people your organization uses a particular software package also tends to make people in related businesses or organizations think "Hey, maybe that program will work for me?"
  
• Documentation: If you can't write code, you can always write docs if you're a gifted tech writer. Let me tell you, there's a LOT of open source software out there that could use some nice docs!
• 
  
  So just because you can't code, or don't have any developers doesn't mean your organization has nothing to contribute.
  

Re:Government sales support the software industry

[schon]

I think it's good that governments consider open source. But at the same time, the government buying comercial software supports my family.

Since when did open source and commercial software become mutually exclusive?

we sell very litte software without consulting and maintenance attached to it.

So what's to stop you from providing open-source versions of your software, and getting paid for the consulting and maintenance?

even if governments have to consider open source software, they're not likely going to go after something that doesn't have a commercial backing of some sort.

Again, a product being open-source doesn't preclude it from being commercial.

Problem with RFPs and OSS

[utuk99]

One of the problems with the RFP system and OSS especially free OSS is that there is often no one available to write the proposal.

Some effort has to be made to look for free software, no one is calling you to sell it to you. I find free software to use at my company occasionally. It usually takes a few hours on the internet to compare all of the free alternatives and can save thousands of dollars compared to what companies are trying to sell to us. Shouldn't the government at least look for alternatives before it shells out our money?

Re:That's a good start

[Gleef]

I'm glad they didn't require the use of Open Source, not because I don't think the freedoms that such a requirement would enforce are important, but because requiring them would be sufficient to torpedo the bill, and a partial measure like this is a good start.

One thing I do wish they would require, and I believe is feasible to require at this point, is Open Standards in data storage and transmission. The bill defines them, but doesn't insist on them. It is a Free Government's responsibility, as representatives of the people, to make sure that their workings are accessible to all the people without forcing the people to spend hundreds of dollars on Word or Excel just to look at a document.

Kind of like the NFL's Minority Hiring policy

[davemabe]

This sounds kind of like the NFL mandating that owners must interview at least one minority candidate when filling a coaching vacancy. That policy doesn't work too well - just look at the recent Lion's hire.

Re:Prize offered

[chinton]

No way man. In this country our elected representatives listen to "The People", not Big Business.

And which country is that?

Re:Will point out glaring gaps in opensource softw

[EvilTwinSkippy]

...Is there such a thing as a FREE SOFTWARE LEECH?

By that measure, how many more people READ literature in this world than write it? How many more people VIEW art in this world than make it? How many more people LISTEN to music in this world than compose it, or even perform it?

The human race has been "Leeching" off of creative poeple at least since the discovery of fire. Up until we had this whole notion of Intellectual Property, this was considered by all parties to be a good thing.

Music without ears to hear it is a pattern of vibrations. Software without a user base is a random gob of bits.

This fights the MS only mindset

[hellfire]

I'm shocked that there are so many in slashdot community who will, on one side, complain that IT departments in private corporations don't mandate that they consider open source products because the IT managers believe, based on false stereotypes and laziness of mind, that MS only is the way to go.

Now those slashdotters are complaining about a law who's sole purpose is to fight that mindset?

Of course this is politics, but its good politics. People who are hired in government IT departments are humans too and suffer from the same conceptions (or misconceptions if you will). Instead of shareholders who ask the CEO to make directives, lawmakers make directives of its subsidiary departments to make sure they fulfill certain goals.

Frankly, I think someone got the idea that Open source might save the taxpayers and the state money and that they are simply asking IT departments to make an effort to look at open source solutions rather than be lazy. Imagine that!

Re:You need legislation for that...

[dmaxwell]

The proposed bill sets a mandate on how the government procures things. It has absolutely nothing to say about how non-govt. Joe Blow runs his IT department. Since you are a tax paying libertarian, I would think you would be in favor of anything that means the govt. spends less money or gets better return on what it does spend. Granted, the savings would be lost in the noise of all the other money governments waste.

It requires things that are entirely favorable to taxpayers. It mandates open formats for data storage which makes it less likely that the government would mandate say using Word to complete an electronic tax form. It legitimizes consideration of vendors and solutions the government couldn't consider. The consequences mean a bit more choice in how citizens interact with government. How is any of this a threat to libertarians?

Re:You need legislation for that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"if women are the equal of men in so many areas, why do we need hiring quotas, or any gender-based reporting, for that fact?

"if [fill in the blank] is the equal of white folk, then why do we need the additional burden of making sure we hire a certain amount of Them?"

"if all these other companies [minority "owned", women "owned", etc.] companies are equally as good as these companies that coincidentally happen to be owned by major political donors, why do we need to be unfairly forced to consider their bids?"

For the same reasons that government contracts have to take bids from local suppliers, minority-owned companies, etc.

Looking for teeth

[jeremy_hogan]

I've seen a couple of comments that an admin can say it's no viable and opt into proprietary solutions. That the bill is unenforcable or accomplishes little. Consider this:

1) It gets F/OSS on the list of allowable purchases
2) Portland school districts estimate 1.5M in licensing alone as pre-bill adopters. Savings indicative of larger statewide saving spotential.
3) Incentive for gov't focused VARs to deploy
4) Precludes use of EULA 6 type licensing
5) Considers the disposition of the a merit, protects integrity of public data systems


Not all of the benefits translate directly to savings, some will beget savings, some will encourage out of the box thinking, some are just the right things to do.

Re:Will point out glaring gaps in opensource softw

[starseeker]

"Is there such a thing as a FREE SOFTWARE LEECH?"

I take it by this you mean someone who uses the software without giving back to the community. Um.

Stop and think about this a second. Additional users are always helpful to software. They may spot bugs, someone may suggest a feature you haven't thought of. Even if you never hear from them, they may recommend it to someone else who then helps you out. And ultimately, you were going to write the software anyway. You're a volunteer. You can always bow out and let someone else take over. So why should you resent a "leech"? You want the software to be used.

And not to mention the warm fuzzy feeling you get when your work is actually downloaded and does something useful. Remember, in the open source world the motivation is not money. (Not that it isn't nice, but it's not the main focus.)

It's not Only MS

[Lucas Membrane]

IBM still has mainframes in the Oregon state government. They have piles of DL1, CICS, and all of that. Because the state is budget-crunched, they are not funding wholesale rewrites, conversions, and migrations. They are incrementally going to new technologies. The most popular of these for the IT managers in the state government is Webshpere. This is not an easy place for open source to win, because it will be hard to slowly migrate and do piecewise replacements of mainframe systems without going to something else that runs under the same mainframe OS, eg Websphere.