New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
1–10 of 111 posts
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#2A 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.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#3Calling 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?
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#4> … alongside the rest of humanity in a collective development effort, as opposed to the alternative where we would be restricted by companies like Microsoft or Apple, who only care about controlling us to make money.
I was optimistic until I read this sentence.
So, does this bill mean that products like MS Office can’t be used in schools because it would force students to use proprietary software? Is it just targeting websites that use extensions that are only usable in a certain browser?
The stated goals seem good at first glance but then the justifications go off the rails for me.
> You can’t become a competent programmer by using Windows or MacOS.
MacOS is BSD based and runs most OSS so, I’m not even sure how they are coming up to this point.
Similarly, Windows has been used for development and teaching development at universities for a long time.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#5Calling 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 but at least there you can always fall back on the source. That makes a massive difference.
For example, one of the reasons I switched from Java to Go back in the day is that I could actually read the source code of the APIs I was using. So I could fully understand the standard library whereas in Java it was all obfuscated bytecode. I'm not sure if the situation has changed with OpenJDK but my point stands, an open core system is far superior platform for learning.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#6> … alongside the rest of humanity in a collective development effort, as opposed to the alternative where we would be restricted by companies like Microsoft or Apple, who only care about controlling us to make money. I was optimistic until I read this sentence. So, does this bill mean that products like MS Office can’t be used in schools because it would force students to use proprietary software? Is it just targeti…
> So, does this bill mean that products like MS Office can’t be used in schools because it would force students to use proprietary software? Is it just targeting websites that use extensions that are only usable in a certain browser?
Isn’t it rather that schools can’t force students to use proprietary software? They can have an Office license but they also have to maintain (or pay someone to) something like LibreOffice.
I spent a year in a German university and all the computers could boot up to windows, Linux or BSD depending on the user’s preference.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#7Calling 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…
of course they’re wrong, there are thousands of competent programmers working on windows and macos, I love linux I just hate this kind of hyperbolic self-aggrandizing
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#8I’m tempted to say this is a result of the politics of our times, but I guess extremism has been around forever.
In this case they are taking what is, at its core, may be a pretty good idea, and then they load it down with rhetoric. And hence guarantee to turn off people with slightly different opinions, and confuse people who haven’t the slightest clue what they are talking about.
Given that nearly everyone in the Western World works for some kind of corporation, starting off by calling them evil is not going to get you very far.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#9That 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 bill.
The bill died in a unanimous vote last time around, and it's not going to anywhere close to success this time either. However some other parts of the 2022 bill (considering libre solutions for new applications, limiting NDAs and non-competes, allow audits of software used in criminal cases) are more feasible and might stand a chance if they're also split into new bills.
Re: New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
#10> … alongside the rest of humanity in a collective development effort, as opposed to the alternative where we would be restricted by companies like Microsoft or Apple, who only care about controlling us to make money. I was optimistic until I read this sentence. So, does this bill mean that products like MS Office can’t be used in schools because it would force students to use proprietary software? Is it just targeti…
> You can’t become a competent programmer by using Windows or MacOS.
Not gonna fly with over 50% of engineers. For a good reason too