Re: looks like it's happening everywhere but the US.

[email protected] wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 06:40:07PM -0500, lon jones wrote:
> 
>>  South Africa launches OSS center
>>http://www.opensector.org/1066933242
>>
>>  Danish paper on the
>>       Potential for major public savings in open source software 
>>http://www.tekno.dk/subpage.php3?article=969&survey=14&language=uk&front=1
>>
>>  the paper in english (pdf)
>>http://www.tekno.dk/pdf/projekter/p03_opensource_paper_english.pdf
>>
>>  The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines
>>http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/ida/jsps/index.jsp?fuseAction=showDocument&parent=news&documentID=1647
>>
>>  China urged to join Asian Linux push
>>http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,7612224%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
>>
>>  Open Asia: Open source in the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, 
>>  and Singapore
>>http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/09/200248
> 
> 
> Umm - No.   Lots of things are happening in the US, but the nature of
> our democracy makes it very unlikely and even illegal to enact
> laws that prohibit open access to bidding for government work. 
> 
> Even so, conversion to Open Source is happening anyway.
> 
>           * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
> 
>                MASSACHUSETTS GOES OPEN SOURCE
> 
>           * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
> 
> 
> http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Oct/gee20031021022279.htm
> 
> Massachusetts has mandated a policy of purchasing Open Source software
> over proprietary alternatives. The mandate was announced by the state's
> Administration and Finance Secretary, Eric Kriss, in a memo to the head
> of information technology for the state. The move toward Open Source is
> also outlined in a September 29th memo concerning "The Capital Budget"
> on Kriss' state government website.
> 
> The new policy seems to take direct aim at Microsoft products.
> Massachusetts' US$80 million dollar technology budget may still have
> some Microsoft line items in it, though. Kriss stated that in situations
> where the Open Source alternative is not cost effective, Microsoft
> products could be used.
> 
> (Notice that the above allows all vendors, even microsoft, to bid for
> work but they all have to meet the Open Source requirement.)
> The Massachusetts economy moved 5 trillion in 1999, larger than many
> countries.  This change will definitely have an effect on the status of 
> Open Source in the US.
> 
> 
> For another example - look at the city of Largo in Florida:
> http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/12/04/2346215&mode=thread&tid=110&tid=132&tid=2&tid=37
> 

 > the nature of
 > our democracy makes it very unlikely and even illegal to enact
 > laws that prohibit open access to bidding for government work


Please forgive me in advance for contradicting you. I wrote a paper 
about this http://governmentforge.org/archives/000064.html

and felt I clearly established that the nature of our democracy would 
encourage such laws.

Democracy and capitalism are not coupled in any way. In fact, most of 
the current laws and regulations related to the DMCA have constitutional 
deficiencies.

I spoke with members of the Texas senate within the last two weeks and 
we're encouraged by the Massachusetts policy statement. We plan to put 
our Open Source mandate into law.

from: http://www.cioupdate.com/trends/article.php/2237451

# Garden Grove, Calif., and Bloomington, Indiana also both run much of 
their IT operations on Linux servers. In Bloomington, the city's 
emergency dispatch system, running on Linux, dispatches 7,000 ambulance 
calls a year, as well as police and fire crews, for both the city and 
surrounding Monroe County.

# The Houston, Texas, city government runs its Web and domain name 
servers on Red Hat Linux.

# An IBM mainframe belonging to Pinellas County, Florida is home to a 
database of county court records, which can be searched by the county's 
900,000 citizens. The system, running on Linux and IBM's WebSphere 
middleware, gets more than 50,000 hits a month.

# The email system for the Los Angeles school district runs on Linux. 
Other school systems, such as the one in Portland, Ore., are installing 
Linux-based thin clients in classrooms for student use.

Cincinnati, Ohio, Newport News, Virg., St. Louis, Missouri, and Austin, 
Tex., among other cities, are also reported to be either using Linux or 
seriously evaluating it as well. A number of smaller governments -- 
Jefferson County, Colo., St. George, Utah (population 50,000), and 
Chappaqua, NY (pop. 15,000), for example -- are also using Linux.

So are various departments in state governments across the country, 
including Rhode Island, Texas, Washington State and Oregon. "Every 
agency of any size in the State of Oregon is probably using open source 
at some level," says Deborah Bryant, an IT policy planner for the 
state's Department of Administrative Services.