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New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

libreboot.org

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Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#41

Post by orbital223 »

lukifer wrote: post #17
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

Programmers have got to be the stupidest profession with regard to money. Every single profession, be they doctors, lawyers, actors, artists, tries to increase the value of their work. Programmers go out of their way to devalue the result of their work (software), with the result that the main ways to make money from software is either to use it to power ads, use it to power commerce (Amazon), or use it to power hard…

Perhaps you've never heard of Doctors Without Borders, pro bono, community theater, or the Creative Commons? There is more to life than merely maximizing one's bargaining leverage.

Doctors without borders provide free labor to needy children in war torn countries. Programmers provide free labor to first world corporations worth millions of dolars.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#42

Post by giantg2 »

leepowers wrote: post #32

DoIT estimates the project will take at least 5 years to make the necessary changes resulting in a total state general fund cost of approximately $1.47 Billion .... Total Annual Cost $293,894,620 The Department states historically the cost of implementing a new application, whether replacing an existing application or implementing applications where none existed before, is three to seven times the cost of purchasing…

I'll be downed hard for this, but...

If it doesn't provide any benefits, then this is a philosophical change. Seems almost like a case for separation of church and state.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#43

Post by gerdesj »

kerkeslager wrote: post #39
CharlesW wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article, but didn’t see a list of the proprietary software that’s required to interact with New Hampshirite state agencies. Are there examples of this problem?

I'm not sure of New Hampshire's stage agencies, but the most common problem I've experiences interacting with government agencies is PDFs. The format is fairly well-designed to be easy to read so many libre software alternatives can view PDFs, but forms are another story. If a PDF form hasn't been tested in libre readers, it would be unwise to assume that it works in libre readers (or even some proprietary readers).…

I recently edited a pdf form using Okular (KDE app on Linux - Arch in this case). It was a pretty involved multi page bank mortgage related form. The app that designed this beauty was running on a Mac (can't remember more but I did see Mac in some metadata on it). One field went a bit odd - it would show one number and print another after I got my data entry a bit wrong and corrected it. Clearly a bug.

I passed the form over to Chrome's pdf handler and got the same result. I also passed it through Windows based stuff - I run an IT company. Same result. I did eventually manage to clear the fault.

If I recall correctly it was the day field for date of birth. My DoB is 7th December - I'm a Brit so 7/12. The field wanted 07 for single digit days and I entered 7 followed by the month numbers. So I ended up with 71 in the day field. Field validation was probably not a consideration for an admin in a bank tasked with knocking up a form used by millions of people! If that thing was from IT then they should look for another job.

Anyway - Okular worked the same way as the rest and shared their faults. It did at least manage to look much prettier and work very, very quickly.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#44

Post by leahlibre »

cjpearson wrote: post #9

That price is going to scare away most voters. $1000 per citizen for something that few people care about. You could argue that the cost estimation is a worst-case scenario. It assumes that 90% of the affected software will be made compliant, but it's also possible that they just use proprietary exception for most applications. It would cost much less in that case, but it would do so by abandoning the purpose of the…

As someone who I respect once told me:

Freedom isn't free.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#45

Post by Dalewyn »

leahlibre wrote: post #2

A hearing for a bill will take place in New Hampshire on February 16th, 2023, for a bill that, if passed, will require state agencies to accommodate libre software users in public-facing applications, so that people do not have to use proprietary software to access state services on the internet. Your help is needed. More information is available in the linked article.

>Your help is needed.

With all due respect, speaking as someone not in New Hampshire, your (and the article's) request to me and others like myself is a subversion of democracy.

This New Hampshire state bill is being deliberated in the New Hampshire state legislature, to be eventually voted on by New Hampshire state legislators voted in by and representing the people of the state of New Hampshire.

As a strictly state matter, any influence from outside the state of New Hampshire is a subversion of democracy in the state.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#46

Post by [deleted] »

Dalewyn wrote: post #45
leahlibre wrote: post #2

A hearing for a bill will take place in New Hampshire on February 16th, 2023, for a bill that, if passed, will require state agencies to accommodate libre software users in public-facing applications, so that people do not have to use proprietary software to access state services on the internet. Your help is needed. More information is available in the linked article.

>Your help is needed. With all due respect, speaking as someone not in New Hampshire, your (and the article's) request to me and others like myself is a subversion of democracy. This New Hampshire state bill is being deliberated in the New Hampshire state legislature, to be eventually voted on by New Hampshire state legislators voted in by and representing the people of the state of New Hampshire. As a strictly state…

[deleted]

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#47

Post by yCombLinks »

nhooyr wrote: post #5
micromacrofoot wrote: post #3

Calling this “libre software” instead of “free software” seems very self-serving > You can’t become a competent programmer by using Windows or MacOS. Linux or BSD are your only real choice, because that’s where all the interesting development happens. uh excuse me?

He's not wrong. Certainly when it comes to the full scope of being a programmer, Linux and BSD are your only real options. You can't easily add a new filesystem or screw with the kernel on macOS/windows without having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of their books and attend conferences. There isn't really any good detailed up to date documentation online about either. The docs for linux/bsd aren't perfect either bu…

Java went open source in 2006. The first go release was 2009

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#48

Post by redeeman »

nhooyr wrote: post #5
micromacrofoot wrote: post #3

Calling this “libre software” instead of “free software” seems very self-serving > You can’t become a competent programmer by using Windows or MacOS. Linux or BSD are your only real choice, because that’s where all the interesting development happens. uh excuse me?

He's not wrong. Certainly when it comes to the full scope of being a programmer, Linux and BSD are your only real options. You can't easily add a new filesystem or screw with the kernel on macOS/windows without having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of their books and attend conferences. There isn't really any good detailed up to date documentation online about either. The docs for linux/bsd aren't perfect either bu…

> whereas in Java it was all obfuscated bytecode.

uhm... when was this? the jdk has included "src.zip" since.... forever(atleast 15 years). This included the entire class library, and any half competent IDE could(and still can) view it directly if you simply went "view source".

This goes back to before oracle purchased sun, and as such way before openjdk aswell.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#49

Post by AnthonyMouse »

leereeves wrote: post #31
cjpearson wrote: post #9

That price is going to scare away most voters. $1000 per citizen for something that few people care about. You could argue that the cost estimation is a worst-case scenario. It assumes that 90% of the affected software will be made compliant, but it's also possible that they just use proprietary exception for most applications. It would cost much less in that case, but it would do so by abandoning the purpose of the…

> $1000 per citizen How did they reach that figure? $1.4 billion dollars seems like far too much. Edit: Interesting. Their methodology talks about rewriting all the state's public-facing server side applications to be open source. (Hence the cost.) I thought the bill was just requiring that the public be able to use libre browsers and apps on their own devices to access state services, not that the state's server cod…

Suggestion: Pass a bill requiring all new or upgraded systems to be non-proprietary. Then it has no current-year budgetary cost.

The problem with doing it this way is you're accounting for the bill as the cost of upgrading all government systems [to non-proprietary ones], which is on the same order as the cost of upgrading all government systems in general -- something that happens eventually but on its own budget.

So require upgrades to be to non-proprietary systems. Then you just wait. In maybe ten or fifteen years pass a bill requiring any remaining proprietary systems to be replaced, which by then will be fewer of them and by then will be the ones that most need to be replaced.

Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law

#50

Post by AnthonyMouse »

nerdjon wrote: post #38

This feels like a case that I really need an article explaining this not from their prospective. On here https://libreboot.org/news/usa-libre.html one of the examples given: "Bans state agencies from using proprietary software - maybe this could include schools, in the future!" "Bans state agencies from purchasing proprietary software if libre software exists, for a given task" That seems... excessive and way to heav…

Requiring people to use any particular software is bad.

The government wanting to use libre software and passing a bill saying that it shall use libre software is not that.

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