Dear Colleagues,
If you are not in Congressman Rush Holt's New Jersey District, and/or
if you are resolutely apolitical, please delete now, and excuse the
disturbance. For others, please continue<g>.
It is customary for new members of an E-list to introduce themselves. I
am Alan McConnell, a resident of Silver Spring MD, a close-in suburb of
D.C. I am a mathematician and computer person, and I have been running
Linux at home and at work since 1993.(I grew up in Millstone, NJ, and
spent some time in Princeton when I visited the IAS in the spring of 1979)
I have a couple of projects which I hope to get you interested in, one
more general than the other. The first project is to increase the size and
influence of Linux in local, state, and national governments in the US.
To that end I've founded an E-list, run out of tux.org, a LUG in our
neighborhood, called linux-pe(Linux Public Education) You are all
invited to join; simply go to:
http://www.tux.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-pe
and "follow the bouncing ball"<g>.
There is also a web site -- definitely a "work in progress"
http://www.pervasivenetwerks.com/linux-pe/index.php
I append below a write-up about linux-pe .
My own particular enthusiasm, within the realm of increasing the presence
of Linux in government, is to get Linux established within Congress.
As you can all imagine, the House of Representatives is surrounded by
a firewall, within which are presumably lots of communication facilities
and aids; the generic name for this is HIR, House Information Resources.
So, to make Linux possible in a substantive way in the House, we must
have the client SW set up and run by HIR ported to Linux. It is already
available on the Mac platform, as well as of course for M$.
We must get our Congress(wo)men to write to the HIR administrators, asking
them to send back a report on the feasibility/problems of porting the
client SW to Linux.
So this is what has led me to Rush Holt and to you. I know that Mr Holt
started as a scientist, and hence is presumably technically savvy. I also
know that one of his big interests is assuring the accuracy of computer
voting systems, and it seems to me that any such system should be run by
Open Source SW, in order that technical Repubs and technical Dems can
look at the SW to see that it is what it purports to be; very like the
judges at the polling place, Repubs and Dems, who check you as you present
yourself at the polling place to vote.
For these reasons I consider Mr Holt a potential ally. Meanwhile, I and
a group of local colleagues here in Maryland are working on our Representative,
Chris Van Hollen, who is intelligent but not a techie. I believe that he
and Mr Holt know each other and could work together on this issue.
Already a long letter! I thank you for reading. Please send back questions
and comments to me -- but don't forget to cc this E-list!! your ideas
will have a lot more throw-weight if they are shared with everybody. Of
course if you'd join linux-pe as suggested above, that would be very nice<g>.
Best wishes to all,
Alan McConnell
(start)------------------------
Statement of Purpose
linux-pe is an E-list dedicated to "activism" about ways of getting
Linux into use by local governments(libraries, police forces), state
governments(tax and finance SW, communication with constituents) and
national government(my particular cause; I want Congressional offices
to use it). I am the admin, but not the "owner", since I hope for
untrammeled discussion. Examples of what I'd like to see:
1) Linuxians from e.g. Oregon banding together to urge their state
reps to push the bill mandating consideration of Open Source for all
SW purchases by the State of Oregon
2) Reports on Linuxians visiting officials, SW associations(such as the
MMITA in Maryland I visited)
3) Reports on SW already in place, feasibility of ports to Linux, etc
4) Investigation to how the Largo, FL experiment is running
5) Statements from public officials about what they'd like to see.
6) Financial comparisons . . .
I feel that Linux is certainly ready for government use, and it seems clear
that its use can save strapped governmental entities money. If, as is
sometimes asserted, some government shops have "zero interest in saving
money" . . . well, that is an issue which we, as tax-payers, should
address, no?
I hope this does not seem vague; I hesitate to be more specific, for I
have a strong belief that E-lists, at least of this type, should be owned
and run, as far as possible, by its members.
---------------------------(finish)
--
Alan McConnell : http://patriot.net/users/alan
"In an age when we talk about smart bombs, smart missiles, . . any
talk of smart budgets has gone out the window." (Sen Robert Byrd)
