[PLUG] The house bill, a possible problem...

Phil Tomson ptkwt at aracnet.com
Sat Aug 23 13:06:02 UTC 2003


On 23 Aug 2003, Michael C. Robinson wrote:

> Where are all the Microsoft techies going to go?  Employed people are
> constituents, especially in a flat economy.  Linux works so well that
> it could reduce the number of jobs needed at a time when already there
> aren't enough jobs in the high tech sector.  There's no training budget
> right now to teach Microsoft techs Linux.  Face it, most of the cuts
> have been to education.  I think there is broad support for the bill.
> Unfortunately, goliath is so large that toppling him now will cause a 
> lot of damage.  What is needed is a school funding bill, and the taxes
> needed to be lowered back to normal.  The only way to create revenue
> is to create jobs.  Maybe Linux needs to grow more while Microsoft is
> still big stuff.  A transition is needed before a major change.
> This was as true with Jefferson's difficulties releasing his slaves as
> it is today.

Maybe so, but if slavery _had_ been outlawed at the beginning we wouldn't 
have had to have a civil war.

> 
> The arguments for this bill need to address the job displacement issue. 
> Why is open source better than closed, and don't argue savings.

The main issue (for me anyway) is open file formats.  It's not right 
that a government relies on closed file formats (Word docs).  Data should 
be freely available and readable on all platforms.  Otherwise they're 
playing favorites.

> Why shouldn't the legislature favor competition between multiple closed
> source companies instead?  Nobody wants to be accused of destroying
> jobs.  The education cuts have been bad enough, the health care cuts
> we've seen are even worse.  The state is responsible for some people
> dying because of the budget problems and cuts to health care.
> 

So we should continue to use an inferior, closed system which is prone 
to all manner of viruses and worms in order to 
preserve jobs?  I suppose it's similar to the same reason why we can't 
pump our own gas in Oregon - it's for job protection (essentially it's a 
welfare program).  Aren't you proposing maintaining the status-quo as a 
welfare system for state IT workers?  Why don't we just build a baseball 
stadium to provide jobs (oh, wait that's already been proposed) or why not 
just build roads and bridges from inferior materials so we have to rebuild 
them every few years... Oh, wait...


Phil





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