HB1197 was voted ITL (Inexpedient to Legislate) yesterday by the NH House. This was no surprise, as the Executive Dept committee voted to kill it by 15 to 1, and released the following report on it:
HB 1197, establishing a committee to study requiring state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE Rep. James B. Coburn for Executive Departments and Administration: A sub-committee discussed this issue and determined that the major main frame applications are probably not available in open source software. There is software called "open office" that is similar to a Microsoft product installed on most desktops. Upon checking with the Office of Information Technology, it was determined that the state does not have the technical resources to control or support such software. Vote 15-1. Yes, you read that right: Let's not have a study committee to look into this, because we already know that open source doesn't work on mainframes, and of course, we don't have any technical resources for this sort of thing now in OIT, so lets not have a study committee might see that we'd save millions (and thus could afford to hire a few helpdesk staff to support it). Based on this bogus report, we're going to work to have similar legislation introduced again next year, and deal with both of these misperceptions (I suspect someone at OIT wanted this dead on arrival, since they never testified on it in a hearing, but worked behind the scenes against it.) It didn't help that the Science/Tech committee didn't get this bill to consider, either... ExecDepts didn't understand this issue. Next year, I'd love for a few dozen people to show up, and help explain how Open Source works, the benefits (on lots of levels), and how it would increase NH economy, etc. Hopefully, people like Mr. Hall and others can appear and help this happen. Anyone interested in helping this effort, please contact me, as we can start laying the ground work for next year... Seth _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
