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'd be satisfied with...

[YrWrstNtmr]

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

Re:I'd be satisfied with...

[Ichijo]

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.

Re:This is bullshit.

[Jmc23]

So, you couldn't be bothered to read the one page and started on a rant that has nothing to do with what is trying to be accomplished eh?

Slashdotters shouldn't be paying with their time for you to push your agenda.

Re:Some Reasonable Arguments

[bmajik]

There are some great points in there

1) access to data without vendor approval/involvement.

2) interop

3) no "remote killswitch" on software

4) no strange privacy leaks

I think these are all fine requirements.

But it's not clear to me why closed software couldn't meet them.

For instance, how does Windows + Office not meet these requirements?

1) the Office XML formats are documented, open, and have reader/writer libraries on non-Microsoft platforms

2) As a result of the consent decree, and much subsequent engineering and doc work, its quite easy to interop with windows and office.

3) So far as I know, there are editions of Windows and Office that require no internet connection at all, and certainly have no provision for remote-kill.

4) Microsoft is actually pretty good about shutting off telemetry, either on a per user basis, or with centralized management tools -- because enterprise customers want this capability too.

Consider incidentals

[l2718]

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.

Re:Call it the hartbleed act

[rogoshen1]

dude. your argument is basically this : "hEartbleed was a serious bug in FOSS. therefore FOSS is bad". So periodically FOSS has a serious bug. okay.

I'm not even going to bother trying to reference all the recent events involving Adobe, MS, or Apple having quite serious bugs in their proprietary code.
A similar bug could have just as easily have happened to a closed source shop. As long as humans are writing the code, it's a possibility.

The thing is, companies with licensing revenue have every incentive in the world to machinate lock-in. And with lock-in comes higher prices, both for support and the software itself.

By all means use the best tool for the job, but retaining some optionality for the future is a valuable thing.

I'd rather keep the risk of another bug like heartbleed than deal with vendor lock-in, ever increasing licensing costs, compliance costs, potential BSA raids, and frequent zero day exploits. =/

Re:How About We Make it Mature?

[mx+b]

So instead of Microsoft (a dedicated software company), we would have a network of cities with a couple of developers in each working on an office suite? That's a horrible waste of resources, especially when we already have Microsoft Office which works fine for the most part. Look, I share the concern about open standards, but we have to also consider what is practical.

You are correct, if everyone made their own office suite, but that was not what I was proposing.

I instead would like a few local/state governments to COLLABORATE on the SAME FOSS office suite (and maybe not even a totally new one -- perhaps jump on board LibreOffice, Calligra, etc.) and make it up-to-par to the needs of government, rather than paying Microsoft for continually bloated office suites that push you more and more to their OneDrive and proprietary formats. Yes, there would be some up-front costs, but then everyone -- local governments, small business, whatever -- could benefit from a nice FOSS suite. It's a much more practical use of resources, as well as philosophically good (since government is keeping data in open and documented formats and software, supporting small business by hiring people to work on it, letting small business use the FOSS for free, etc.)