[PLUG] Oregon Open Source bill 941 hearing summary

John Todd jtodd at loligo.com
Thu Aug 21 15:29:03 UTC 2003


I was not very impressed with the people who spoke for the 941 bill, 
though they gave some good points.  They missed the major point, that 
needed to be made as the primary point but was COMPLETELY overlooked.

Summary of the Bill: It says that state purchasing agents (managers, 
etc.) SHALL evaluate open source solutions as a potential solution 
against any other evaluated solution.


So, a good point was made: Why do we need this legislation?  There is 
nothing stopping purchasing agents from choosing open source 
currently, and in fact open source is used in quite a few places in 
the state's IT infrastructure currently.

The reason the bill is needed is that there are no proponents for 
open source software other than the people who are deploying these 
systems.  There is a huge disparity in name recognition or even 
awareness for open source software projects as compared to 
proprietary software systems.  This is because open source software 
doesn't make money - they can't afford advertising, even though the 
"product" that these projects deliver is, in some cases, much better 
than the closed source versions.

There are no "sales people", there is no "collateral", no advertising 
blitzes, no full page ads in Wired magazine.  Open Source travels by 
word of mouth.  The only advocates are generally the low-level grunts 
that install the stuff and have to deal with the day to day 
operations - they are advocates, since they KNOW it works better. 
Everyone else up the ladder of management is often unaware (with some 
rare exceptions) of the existence of packages that could do the same 
thing for free.

The legislation is required to force the decision makers into asking 
this question of themselves and their staff before making a decision: 
"Have I examined the costs and features of any free software that 
provides the same functions as other packages that I am evaluating?"

These managers are busy people.  They will not go out of their way to 
find a free solution if they are not forced to do it.  The 
proprietary solution is easy to find: the sales guy is leaping up and 
down outside of the manager's window holding a big sign that says 
"Buy Me!" while open source has no such method of advertising itself.

There is nothing in this bill that forces a manager to choose open 
source software.  It simply forces them to find out if there is a 
free (or lower cost) solution that exists to provdide the same 
functionality.  That is a very moderate and reasonable thing to ask 
in the handling of my tax dollars.

Epilogue: Plus, while this may not have been their choice, the 
pro-941 speakers let the opposition speak last, which allowed the 
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt creep into the discussion.  ("I'm not 
sure...",  "I don't think we're ready...", "We should give this to 
the task force..." - all of these are obvious bluffs to confuse the 
legislators, which I see partially succeeded.)


JT




More information about the PLUG mailing list