New Hampshire Passes 'Open Source Bill' 260
Plugh writes "In a victory for transparency and openness in government, and saving tax dollars, New Hampshire has passed HB418. State agencies are now required by law to consider open source software when acquiring software, and to promote the use of open data formats."
Re:To what degree? (Score:5, Informative)
I. For all software acquisitions, each state agency, in consultation with the department of information technology, shall:
(a) Consider whether proprietary or open source software offers the most cost effective software solution for the agency, based on consideration of all associated acquisition, support, maintenance, and training costs;
(b) Except as provided in subparagraphs (d) and (e), acquire software products primarily on a value-for-money basis, based on consideration of the cost factors as described in subparagraph (a);
(c) Provide a brief analysis of the purchase decision, including consideration of the cost factors in subparagraph (a), to the chief information officer;
(d) Avoid the acquisition of products that do not comply with open standards for interoperability or data storage; and
(e) Avoid the acquisition of products that are known to make unauthorized transfers of information to, or permit unauthorized control of or modification of a state agency’s computer.
II. All state procurement documents related to software acquisitions shall include language that requires adherence to this section.
Re:To what degree? (Score:5, Informative)
I know this is Slashdot and people will rush to post moronic questions just to get first post that would be easily answered if they would bother to read the links, and that will get modded up instantly by other morons . . . but the text of HB418 is actually quite specific. For example:
I. For all software acquisitions, each state agency, in consultation with the department of information technology, shall:
...
(d) Avoid the acquisition of products that do not comply with open standards for interoperability or data storage; and
(e) Avoid the acquisition of products that are known to make unauthorized transfers of information to, or permit unauthorized control of or modification of a state agency’s computer.
There's a lot of other stuff too, including stuff about open data formats.
Re:Meaningless (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Meaningless (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks, as author of the bill, that was indeed PART of the intent of this...
I'm the legislator and prime sponsor, and author.. (Score:5, Informative)
I'll answer any questions people have about the bill... post comments below.
This will be the FIRST Open Source and Open Data bill in any of the 50 states.
I'm very happy... And yes, I'm a geek. I've got a slashdot UID of 5 digits, have contributed to the Linux kernel and other project, tech edited a book on Drupal, and been doing techy things for over 25 years now...
Re:To what degree? (Score:5, Informative)
Bingo. And the Open Data stuff uses the suggested principles formulated by the Open Government Data group including Prof. Larry Lessig.
Re:Ugh. PC Comes to the PC (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that I'm a libertarian (and member of the Free State Project, so not just a iffy libertarian, but one who packed up and moved his life to New Hampshire, and eventually ran for office, won, and got this legislation passed...), this is FAR from Nanny-State.
Government needs to be accountable on how taxpayer money is spent. Individuals can buy whatever they like, but I want the system to buy only the best choice for the least money, and if open source is considered, it'll often win. Not always, but more than it does now. (NH does use some open source now... FYI, including Apache webservers, for example, for some things)
Re:To what degree? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, which is why the Open Data part of this bill is even more exciting than the Open Source part of it.
I. The commissioner shall develop a statewide information policy based on the following principles of open government data. According to these principles, open data is data that is:
(a) Complete. All public data is made available, unless subject to valid privacy, security, or privilege limitations.
(b) Primary. Data is collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, rather than in aggregate or modified forms.
(c) Timely. Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
(d) Accessible. Data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.
(e) Machine processable. Data is reasonably structured to allow automated processing.
(f) Nondiscriminatory. Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
(g) Nonproprietary. Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control, with the exception of national or international published standards.
(h) License-free. Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security, and privilege restrictions may be allowed.
Compare that to http://www.opengovdata.org/home/8principles [opengovdata.org]
Re:Ugh. PC Comes to the PC (Score:4, Informative)
Some of both... and every shade between, and some new flavors you have heard of... like female libertarians... yes, they exist, really.
Come visit NH, meet all kinds of folks, and see for yourself.
Feb 23-26th: http://freestateproject.org/libertyforum [freestateproject.org]
In June: http://freestateproject.org/content/porcfest [freestateproject.org]
Re:Open Source Perpetuity? Don't make me laugh... (Score:5, Informative)
No, you don't understand the bill...
It doesn't REQUIRE them to use Open Source over other solutions, but to consider it, using cost benefits answers. And all of your objections are moot then, since this bill essentially DOES what you want it to do: "government adopting Common Open Data formats and selecting the software based on performance makes more sense." (performance and price = total cost benefit analysis, right?)
Re:Open Source Perpetuity? Don't make me laugh... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, this is why the Secretary of State's office, via the State Archivist, came out in favor of the bill:
They have punch cards they legally must retain, and no way to read them. Data without the code/hardware to read it is useless, but we have to keep it all.
So the above is really true. Open formats are vital for data to be historically useful.
Re:To what degree? (Score:5, Informative)
Try holding Microsoft's feet to the fire with that one please... they have an "open specification" but they don't follow it...
the above quote is from wikipedia
Plus it's got patents involved with it that aren't compatible with GPL
Re:To what degree? (Score:4, Informative)
Your document is a good example of the problems proprietary formats can cause.
The reason your document's form fields do not work in Word is not because of issues with LibreOffice, it's a compatibility issue between Word's binary format (W95-2000 .doc) and the newer .docx format. You would have the same problem using different versions of Word.
The check boxes used in your form have been deprecated in Word 2007's .docx, and are only accessible under the Developer tab of the Ribbon interface. To get it to work the way you expect, you'll need to save it as a .doc from LibreOffice, which will force Office 2007 to switch to the legacy mode.