Feel free to email Representative Minnis and tell her what you think.
She's the Speaker of the House for the State of Oregon. Recently, House Bill 2892 was killed by her before it could be debated in the House. This bill ordered government agencies to consider open source software. It did not require them to use it, but merely to consider this software when making acquisitions. Given that we have the shortest school year in the nation, are taking away medical benefits from many indigent people and are granting early release from prison to felons because we don't have enough money, it seems to make sense that we consider less expensive alternatives to software which costs our state millions of dollars.
In fact, the only serious opposition to the bill appeared to be large software companies who sent in their lobbyists to defeat the bill. So why, one might wonder, would Representative Minnis not allow this bill to be debated on the floor of the House? She merely claims that it's a solution in search of a problem. If that's the case, there was no need for her to personally kill the bill and not allow debate, was there?
Below is the body of the email that I sent to her office (and that I now understand is gaining wider circulation):
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I appear to live just outside of your district, which I find somewhat disappointing as this denies me the opportunity to vote against you in the next election.
Your statement in the Tuesday Oregonian, where you object to House Bill 2892 (the "open source" bill), makes it very clear that you cannot be trusted to put the interests of the people in front of your own.
While my vote won't count, I hope to ensure that others who hear me will remember this. I first learned about your behavior and your disingenuous comments at the Portland City Club today (5/9/2003) after receiving information about you from several mailing lists (Portland Linux Users Group, Eugene Linux Users Group and Portland Perl Mongers). There appear to be more and more people hearing about you personally killing this bill.
On the plus side, if you believe that there's no such thing as bad publicity, you're getting plenty of it:
Of course, you'll be getting a bit more exposure, too. I'll be happily forwarding this email to my friends. Who knows? Maybe one of them will get a chance to vote against you.
It may indeed have been a solution in search of a problem. That's something that should have been debated. Silently killing HB 2892 raises some unpleasant questions.
up on some of the places who have started to use OSS in government with some real, hard numbers to back up the cost savings claims? Aside from the obvious savings of the initial purchase cost, all software costs real money in terms of training and support. I don't much care for M$ but the OSS zealotry has gotten a lot worse in the last few years, to the point of being very unappealing to many people. 50 different support contracts vs. 1 is not compelling either.
In the short term, it is highly unlikely that switching to OSS will save enough money for schools and health care. Even before there was M$ there was never enough money for schools and healthcare. There must be more effective ways to appeal for OSS than to legislate its use or consideration of its use.
Re:has anyone ever followed
Ovid on 2003-05-10T18:41:49
I tend to lean towards the open-source end of things simply because being able to audit the code has plenty of benefits that I won't belabor here. I am not a free software zealot, however. Some free software is great. Some free software is miserable. That's not what bothers me here.
My concern with Minnis' actions is that she personally killed this bill rather than allow an open debate on the topic. Would OSS and free software be a boon to government? Who knows? However, I would much prefer that there be open discussion on this issue rather than her unilaterally taking it upon her self to stifle such discussion. It's not as if this is some nutty idea like a bill to label many war protesters as terrorists (such a bill was actually proposed here in Oregon). It's a reasonable attempt to save some money and, as such, deserves reasonable discussion.
Re:has anyone ever followed
hfb on 2003-05-10T20:19:32
Discussion, sure, but I don't see how legislating the matter forcing them to consider OSS is a viable path to getting such a discussion. It seems the antithesis of OSS in fact. I'd rather see those who wish such consideration by governments to produce some real economic data which they would be unable to ignore. Turku, Finland and their ministry of finance would be a fine place to begin collecting data on the fiscal benefits of considering OSS as a cost-cutting solution to M$. Talk is cheap and generally only produces more talk, but real data with real numbers would very likely get some serious attention.
That she killed the bill in the land of Intel is unsurprising but writing to tell her your friends won't vote for her is unlikely to cause her much concern, especially since people are easy to buy. Don't get mad, get some proof or at least data from other governments that suggest with some certainty OSS would save money and start campaigning.
Re:has anyone ever followed
gizmo_mathboy on 2003-05-11T17:50:20
This week's Economist has an article that relates to this, tangentially. It notes that Amazon is saving $20 million due to a move towards linux. It also mentions how Google is saving money by using open source as well as commoditized hardware.
I would dearly love to have an alternative to using WinXP but "it's what the students want" and so I'm deploying it to my computer labs (that's the very short story).
As you wrote, until we see some hard numbers it will be difficult to prove to PHB's that OSS is a good thing.
Do you disagree with the hunch that OSS is good?Re:has anyone ever followed
hfb on 2003-05-11T20:21:29
Amazon is a tech company though and that's a vasty different population compared to the average government office filled with paper pushers and those not terribly interested in how the computer works. The same goes for google.
Do I disagree that OSS is good? In some situations, yes. M$, for all its flaws, knows its market and how to market to them and have never tried to introduce ludicrous legislation to force people to consider their software [ not that I'm aware of anyway ]. Until one of the big outsourcing support businesses take it upon themselves to offer a one-stop service and support contract for whatever OSS applications a company decides to use, I doubt you'll see much penetration into the larger corporate market, particulary on the desktop.
The lock-in M$ seems to have with the average office worker is Office and shared calendaring with Outlook which can also be used on the home PC. The cost to train the users on a whole new operating system, the cost of aquiring or re-training system administration staff and the cost for new support contracts is not trivial either, especially in the short-term. These numbers have to be detailed for businesses considering such a transition. Noone wants to have their ass on the line at 3am with the only support channel available being #linux on IRC because your boss was going freaky with the OSS cost-cutting binge.
Re:has anyone ever followed
ziggy on 2003-05-11T21:57:39
Yeah, stories from Amazon, Yahoo and Google are tangentially interesting, but not particularly relevant to government IT spending. Governments are not corporations. They have similar concerns when it comes to managing a network of thousands of users, but that's really where the similarity ends.It notes that Amazon is saving $20 million due to a move towards linux. It also mentions how Google is saving money by using open source as well as commoditized hardware.As a matter of high level government policy, it is not in a government's best interest to standardize on a totally open source stack. After all, one of the roles of government is to support local industry, so if standardizing on Linux or MySQL costs jobs at Microsoft or Oracle, then it isn't exactly a no-brainer decision.
So while there are significant benefits to open source within government, it's not the same kind of decision that the Amazon board can make to increase shareholder value.
Re:has anyone ever followed
chaoticset on 2003-05-14T03:52:30
*wiping tears of laughter*Governments are not corporations.I remember what I missed most about this place...the funny.
:) Re:has anyone ever followed
ziggy on 2003-05-11T21:46:16
Yes, many times, in many different angles. Off the top of my head, I can recall summaries from the State of Rhode Island, the State of Hawaii, the State of Utah, multiple offices within the US Federal Government, the Army Corps of Engineers, a few municipalities in Colorado, some mental health hospitals in Ohio, and numerous parts of the Department of Defense. There have also been studies in Europe, and the Bundestag is well-known for its support for open source.has anyone ever followed up on some of the places who have started to use OSS in government with some real, hard numbers to back up the cost savings claims?In most of these cases, costs (or cost savings) were not the primary issue, because many of the individuals involved these projects did not have the budget to justify purchasing software. In other cases, time to develop was a key factor, and not waiting for a procurement cycle to use Perl, PHP, Linux or MySQL actually helped finish the project on time. Another batch of cases involve open source capabilities or cross platform portability; it's certainly more cost effective do develop on Windows/Linux and deploy on Solaris because (1) all of the hardware is paid for and (2) open source packages run on all of the relevant platforms. And then there are the cases where there is simply no other tool like Perl when managing a system or a network.
Many people that are advocating open source in government from the inside are citing these success stories because they prove that open source works, and specifically that it works in government settings. And, yes, in many of these situations, using open source did result in thousands of dollars saved in software procurement. In other situations, the software costs were moot because the agencies involved already had site licenses for Oracle/Solaris/Microsoft products, but using tools like Perl, Apache and MySQL sped the development process along (leading to thousands of dollars saved in labor costs).
Finally, most of the open source advocates within government are not preaching the simpleminded "open source doesn't have an acquisition cost" mantra. Rather, bills like the one that was killed in Oregon are necessary in some scenarios because IT budget policies are written with the implicit assumption that all software has a purchase price. (One local Federal Contractor put a $1 CD on the Federal Schedule so he could "sell" the tools in his software stack to develop customized solutions for Federal agencies.) So the issue isn't trying to force open source where it doesn't belong because of misguided zealotry, but rather to rationalize procurement policies to reflect the new realities in software purchasing today.
Re:has anyone ever followed
hfb on 2003-05-12T10:54:53
Where are all these studies? Have any of them made the numbers publicly available along with their methodology?
I still think proposing bills forcing choice or usage of any kind of software, even OSS, couched as 'advocacy' are an extremely poor choice. Correcting the present policies would be a more sane and 'democratic' alternative. Policies are not laws. You cannot litigate choice.
It's doubtful that the problem is ultimately about money rather power.
Re:FWIW
Ovid on 2003-05-13T21:16:00
Hmm
... what is it for the politicians now? Oh, yes: "A politician can overcome anything except a live boy or a dead girl." I seem to recall that Ed Kennedy disproved the latter.
Re:FWIW
pudge on 2003-05-13T21:53:16
Edward/Ted. Regardless, it is possible to overcome anything (Congressman Gerry Studds disproved the former), but it can take time. Trent Lott's statements of late last year didn't sink him permanently, but they seriously damaged him. The point isn't that these things cannot be overcome, just that there is nothing good about certain types of publicity, if you're a politician.
Re:FWIW
Ovid on 2003-05-13T21:57:44
I shoulda put smileys after my comments to make it clear I was joking. I did know what you meant and I agree completely
:) Re:FWIW
pudge on 2003-05-13T22:11:44
I am moving in three weeks... my sense of humor has left me. :-) Re:FWIW
chromatic on 2003-05-14T00:10:59
You could cut that sentence in half and it'd still be true.
Re:FWIW
jmm on 2003-05-14T15:40:24
The first things you pack always turn out to be things you'lleed before the move.Re:FWIW
pudge on 2003-05-14T15:48:01
No, I didn't pack my computer.;-)
