Open letter to Karen Minnis: Oregon Open Source Bill
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
This appeared in The Oregonian, Tues, May 8, 2002. I'm including
Minnis in CC in hopes that she provides us with some further insight
as to why the Open Source Bill isn't going to go through.
[--- Begin letter ---]
In his May 2 opinion piece, Ken Barber accused me of killing
legislation regarding open-source software (House Bill 2892) "after
powerful out-of-state corporate interests showed up at the Oregon
Capitol, seeking to make the bill go away"
This is not true. I won't stoop to Barber's level and question his
motives, but let me make it clear that this bill died for a simple
reason: It is a solution in search of a problem. As stated in the
2001 Oregon Revised Statutes, section 291.038(3): "Rules, plans and
specifications shall be formulated to insure that information
resources fit together in a statewide system capable of providing
ready access to information, computing or telecommunication
resources. rules, plans and specifications shall be based on industry
standards for open systems to the greatest extent possible."
ORS 291.038(8)f clearly defines open systems: "'Open systems' means
systems that allow state agencies freedom of choice by providing a
vendor neutral operating environment where different computers,
applications, system software and networks operate together easily and
reliabily."
I appreciate Barber's efforts to encourage state agencies to use
open-source software, and I share his desire to save money at all
levels of state government. However, state agencies already have the
ability under existing law to use open-source software.
Karen Minnis (R-Wood Village, OR)
Speaker of the House
Salem, OR
[--- End Letter ---]
But that's just it, though: there is nothing enforcing it, but instead
less reliable, more expensive solutions are being used.
For example, the state's webservers are running Solaris 8 and Apache.
Apache's a good start (fast, reliable, open and free), but why wasn't
Linux or BSD chosen for the OS? At $500 to $12,000 per license[1],
Solaris 8 can't compete on price, both BSD and Linux are distributed
for free. Oracle also appears to be widely used for databases in
various state offices, at $300 per license[2]. Why not one of the
half dozen or so open source relational database systems? And what
about the thousands of Windows boxes you see in various state offices
like the Department of Employment and the Department of Motor
Vehicles? Most of them run Windows, which anybody who has had the
misfortune of supporting Windows systems can tell you that they're
both extremely expensive to install (~$300 per machine for the OS
alone) and expensive to maintain (more people needed to maintain the
same number of machines, plus the need for virus containment, etc
adding to costs on Windows). The problem is there's apparently some
sort of stigma against what is frequently (but not always) the right
choice, and HB 2892 was intended to combat that.
I concede that Minnis is indeed correct that it's already in ORS291.
My other question for Minnis (and pardon me if it sounds like I'm
putting you on the spot): Why was it decided that the parts of HB 2892
that would have required explaination for using a more expensive
solution removed from the bill? Removing that portion removed all the
difference between 2892 and existing law, as far as I can tell.
[1] According to
http://store.sun.com/catalog/doc/BrowsePage.jhtml;$sessionid$IYEMWUFZQRWTLAMTHLUSTGUBSM3OSKXO?cid=83253&parentId=56766
[2] According to
http://oraclestore.oracle.com/OA_HTML/ibeCZzpEntry.jsp?go=buy&item=353063&qty=1&uom=EA&site=OracleStoreUS
- --
Paul Johnson
Beaverton, OR
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQE+uJfOJ5vLSqVpK2kRAou6AJ4heslfGlArypM2/G3bhRrLJyHNlACgjBNb
7oPxiueF899K49U703ZqRVQ=
=xCui
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Reply to: