HB1197 Public Meeting

bmcculley at rcn.com bmcculley at rcn.com
Wed Jan 18 11:43:00 EST 2006


Bruce, I think you gave some good advice there.  A couple of
other thoughts....  

First, my perspective.  A few years ago I attended several
meetings of Rep. Alger's Technology Committee, in my role as a
member of the executive board of NH Login (New Hampshire Local
Government Information Network, the IT special interest group
within the NH Municipal Association).  I see that Mr. Alger is
no longer in the House, so my history there is not relevent
now.  I also note that this was assigned to a more significant
committee, so I infer it's getting a serious look.  

I don't think it would be out of line to make contact with
various committee members before the hearing, to at least ask
what their concerns and interests might be.  At the very least
that could work as an antidote to any FUD, at the best it
could allow us to help shape the discussion more favorably. 
It might be worthwhile to inquire of the committee chair about
whether there might be any opportunity to speak or participate
in any fashion.

Let's consider what we want for an outcome, and what's most
likely.  I would say that overall our desired long term
outcome would be to have support or endorsement of FOSS for
state use.  Practically I doubt we can expect to accomplish
that at this time.  Not only will the vendors be spreading
FUD, they will be sending their minions, the state employees
who use proprietary products to build IT systems will feel
their jobs are made more valuable through specialized
knowledge and will probably act to protect their turf.  The
best outcome I think we could expect would be a continued
investigation and study committee, justified by potential
savings (a powerful argument to our legislators!) and focusing
on the practical issues of what implementation would involve
and what costs and savings would be expected.

Incidentally, if we have any way to find out if Red Hat, IBM,
et al are interested and perhaps to work with them on this it
would be very good.  I would certainly be glad to do whatever
I can to help, in my copious free time :-)

-Bruce McCulley

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:31:36 -0500
>From: Bruce Dawson <jbd at codemeta.com> 
>Subject: Re: HB1197 Public Meeting  
>To: Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com>
>Cc: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at crschmidt.net>, GNHLUG
<gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Bill McGonigle wrote:
>
>| On Jan 17, 2006, at 23:28, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
>|
>|> Not sure if I'll be going, but I'm thinking about it. (I'm
also not
>|> 100%
>|> sure if it's open to the public, but am 95% sure on it.)
If others are
>|> interested, I can confirm details.
>|
>| Would this be purely as a spectator sport? In other words,
do we
>| need one person to take notes or would a mass of warm bodies be
>| somehow useful?
>
>This is a work session; I believe the representatives would
appreciate
>more warm bodies when the bill goes to the Senate.
>
>However, I recommend that one or two of us show up just to
make sure
>that closed-source providers haven't stacked the deck against
>open-source by feeding FUD to the committee. And if they
have, I'm not
>sure what can be done about it during a working session -
probably
>call the reps afterwards and let your thoughts be known about
their
>"evaluation process".
>
>If you want to go, do your homework first by reading:
>
>~ http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2006/HB1197.html
>
>They are evaluating open source to see if its cost- and
operation-
>competitive with non-open source alternatives.
>
>|> Tuesday, Jan 24th:
>|> 2:00 p.m. Subcommittee work session on HB 1197,
>|> establishing a
>|> committee to study requiring state government to consider
using open
>|> source software when acquiring new software.
>|
>| So if this does call for a mob we could conceivably do
this, have
>| dinner, and still make the Quarterly Meeting.
>
>I don't believe a mob would be welcome at this session - just
one or
>two knowledgeable people. I would think Redhat/SuSE/IBM/...
would have
>someone monitoring this bill.
>
>- --Bruce
>
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