Proposed bill in New Hampshire would enshrine free software into law | Hacker News Reader

Proposed bill in New Hampshire would enshrine free software into law

libreboot.org

215 pointsnixass67 comments

This page doesn't seem to be an accurate summary of what's in the bill.

The bill is much less far-reaching than suggested. Here's the most relevant part of the actual text:

"21-W:4 Mandatory Use of Proprietary Software Prohibited. No person in the state of New Hampshire shall be required to use proprietary software for any interaction with the government, including but not limited to: the filing or payment of taxes, remote appearance for court proceedings, the taking of standardized tests or the completion of coursework by school students, applying for or receiving unemployment benefits, or other similar benefits, unless the government agency has determined that the proprietary software is the only means available for the required interaction. In such cases, the agency shall post a notice of its determination and the use of proprietary software on the agency's website.

21-W:5 Proprietary Software on State Websites. No person in the state of New Hampshire shall be required to allow the execution of proprietary javascript in their browser when visiting websites administered by the state of New Hampshire. The department of information technology shall verify that this is the case for each executive branch agency via the use of browser extensions of their choice that are designed to detect and block the execution of proprietary javascript in their browsers, and by confirming that no proprietary java script blocks the functioning of any third-party online archiving services that are attempting to archive state websites."

The ONLY cases where it's banning non-free software is where the non-free software touches the citizens directly...where those citizens have to use or buy it. Could be tricky for some types of interactions, like allowing state employees to get paycheck stubs/records, Zoom-based court procedings, etc. But it's not broadly "banning non-free software".

https://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billT...

The actual text of the bill seems very reasonable. Developing and using free and open source solutions can save taxpayer money when it reduces duplication of effort among governments. Software for the functions listed in 21-W:4 is also needed in other states, counties, and cities.

I hope the bill passes.

Yeah... looking at this it seems like there's still some gaping holes, for example specifying javascript in particular leaves WebAssembly open which is arguably worse than non-free javascript, and anything server-side is just ignored, like you said.

My gut feeling is that any reasonable court would see "JavaScript" and interpret it to include WASM as well.

The purpose of the bill is to ensure that all of the state's public touchpoints are free of proprietary software ownership. The subsection prior says that you shouldn't have to use proprietary software to interact with the government. Then they explicitly mention JavaScript to clarify that websites should also not load proprietary software onto people's computers, either. And WASM is specifically designed to integrate with JavaScript - in fact, it can't even be loaded without it.

The standard for interpretation of contracts and law is that, absent a specific definition of a term in the relevant document, you use the broadly-accepted definition of that term within that industry or endeavor. If you asked a bunch of web developers, "does 'no proprietary JavaScript' also mean 'no proprietary WASM'", they would almost certainly agree.

That's still pretty amazing. It's true, nobody should be required to use proprietary malware just to interact with government services. I'm happy to see somebody finally stepped up and wrote that into law. This will inspire more similar proposals.

So what will change, really? Surely people can already access all government services from a Linux PC with Firefox? Nobody has Flash or Java installed anymore, so I can't imagine they require those.

>> the taking of standardized tests

I hope the NH Bar is ready for this. Bar exams are almost universally administered through proprietary test-taking software. I think the key words are "shall be required". They will make a paper option available in some corner of an office somewhere, thus freeing them to use all the propriety software they want.

The state whose official slogan is "Live Free Or Die". I'm not surprised.

Bans state agencies from using proprietary software - maybe this could include schools, in the future!

Bans state agencies from purchasing non-free software if free software exists, for a given task

...that might be going a bit too far, however.

I agree that that might be too far, but the one aspect of being able to audit the source code in a criminal trial makes me want this bill to pass despite that flaw. That is such a big win for justice!

Looking at the bill itself[1], I don't think the short sentence summary is correct. I think the summary might actually hurt the bill, rather than help it.

What I'm seeing is things like:

"No person in the state of New Hampshire shall be required to use proprietary software for any interaction with the government,..."

I don't see anything that would, for example, ban Microsoft Word, unless it somehow became mandatory for a NH citizen to have to own it to interact with the state.

https://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billT...

It's surprisingly common for government agencies to request that you send them Word documents or install some proprietary software.

That LibreOffice can create/edit Word documents means that particular requirement would be fine under the proposed bill. Installing proprietary software obviously wouldn't though.

It would still require that the documents open correctly in LibreOffice, no? Which might be difficult enough to ensure in practice for .docx that it would be easier for the state to mandate using ODF.

Mandating using ODF would indeed be much better, but of course that mandate doesn't prevent interop issues from occurring.

What I meant is that if there's a law that says that interop with F/OSS must be possible, it'd probably make more sense for government agencies to internally mandate the use of ODF for all outputs, than for them to test and fix every .docx that they produce for compatibility with LibreOffice. ODF might not be free from interop issues, but I'd expect the baseline to be much better.

Or PDFs that can only be used from Acrobat reader.

Pdfs open in Firefox just fine.

So I presume your emphasis is on only. Are there any features in a pdf that lock it to Adobe reader? Is anyone (govt? ) using that feature.

Some PDFs really don't work at all except in Acrobat. One example is USCIS form I-9: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-9...

Interesting. Does not open right in Chrome, but is opening with Firefox for me.

The I-9 form an XFA application, not something anyone sane would recognize as a proper PDF. It's all JavaScript and XML-based forms stored as opaque streams inside a PDF container and has almost nothing in common with standard PDF files beyond the container format. It works in Mozilla because Mozilla's pdf.js supports XFA as of Firefox release 91. Most PDF readers do not support XFA, which is quite reasonable considering its rarity and the fact that it has been deprecated for several years. An HTML form would have been a far better fit for this purpose.

JavaScript for form entry even though PDF already has an older form mechanism.

Lots. My wife and I are in the process of trying to become licensed as foster/adoptive parents in the state of Texas and quite a bit of the paperwork we have had to fill out will open fine in a browser, but can only be edited in Adobe Reader. I just had to fill out a form to get a new common access card to work as a federal contractor for the US DoD and it wasn't possible to save edits to the form except with Adobe Reader Pro. Even the free version of Adobe didn't work. I could read the form fine, but if I can't fill it out, I can't submit it.

A lot of this is just issues with skeuomorphism. There is little reason any of these workflows need to use pdfs at all, except that it represents a smaller feeling change from the legacy paper workflows compared to migrating to a purely web-based workflow that uses html forms instead of editable pdfs. Heck, I think I remember the FAFSA being fully html-based forms over 15 years ago when I first went to grad school, but I'm not totally sure.

If they put even a portion of the funds they would have spent into funding said free projects... I mean GnuPG is now no longer requiring or even accepting donations because of what a German city level government did to promote open source: https://lwn.net/Articles/880248/

Governments sharing and pooling their resources for open source just makes sense.

You bring up a falacy here which I see a lot.

>> "If they put even a portion of the funds they would have spent into funding said free projects"

That's not how govt, or even private, spending works. Govt spending doesn't say "hey, we saved money not buying windows, let's donate money to the Linux foundation". Assuming they save money at all (after retraining, support etc) it simply gets put back in the pot to be spent, or wasted, on the next thing.

Donating from govt funds is really hard, and is frankly just too much like hard work.

It's the same for business. We use free software all day long, but money saved there goes to lots of things, actually contributing to Open Source is an uphill battle.

Open source has figured this out, and have "support plans' a business or government can purchase.

NH's state government is one of the smallest in the union; there's no sales or income tax and only about a million people.

So what you suggest would be more viable in almost every other state in the US or EU.

> The state whose official slogan is "Live Free Or Die". I'm not surprised.

Considering they share a border with a richer more populous state with a 380-something year legacy of "step in line or GTFO" I am surprised.

"Imagine a world where proprietary software doesn’t exist, because it is obsolete; entire generations of people are taught to value freedom, and to staunchly defend it, helping each other learn and grow (and produce better software in the process, with less bugs, because people are now free to do that, without relying on some evil company)"

Rhetoric aside (all companies are evil) I feel like this argument fails at some level because Free Software has not yet figured out a business model that would work in a world with no proprietary software.

Ironically current popular non-propritary software tends to be more Open Source than Free, and much of that is currently relying on "some evil company" for funding.

If the suggested imagine happened, and all company funding dried up (as hoped for) then how does one make a living writing software? And if you can't make a living why do it at all.

One could take video as an example. With funding you get "evils" like Disney, marvel and HBO. Without funding you get what? Tiktok? Even popular YouTube is funded directly by advertising, sponsorships etc.

So is the cost of "quality software" (free, open or proprietary) that proprietary software exists?

Unlike businesses that may have a legitimate need to protect what might be competitive advantages based on their selection of suppliers, governments have no such needs. Yet similar municipalities that have very similar requirements buy the same software thousands of times over.

Governments and schools do much the same things everywhere. The next step is for governments that have passed these laws to form consortia to fund and support open software.

Maybe 'Liberty Software' would be a better brand?

Agreed. As much as the free software movement wishes they could, you can't force the outside world to focus on one connotation (freedom) of word and not the other (free beer).

I quite like the term "libre software" for that reason.

I agree free software could use a better name, but Libre isn't it. It has two issues for native English speakers:

- It's not clear how to pronounce it. Lih-ber? Leeb-ray? Lih-breh? Libe-er? Leeb-ruh? Etc.

- It sounds like it originated in French or Spanish, which is not really accurate.

I honestly think this is something that has held LibreOffice back over the years. When you're trying to convince your superiors to adopt a massively disruptive software change, the last thing you want is for it to sound foreign (from whichever country you may be in) and be difficult to pronounce.

Free Software is international and borderless and made by people with a huge variety of accents. LibreOffice for example has an incredible amount of translations, more than many projects. It would be better for folks to learn to embrace these aspects of Free Software rather than splintering it along nationalistic or linguistic lines.

There is of course some inevitable splintering between the English speaking part of the FLOSS world and individual bubbles of people who don't speak English. For eg it seems like there is a large space of open source projects by people who speak Chinese but not English.

That's fine. My point was that it would be better off with a different name in the English translation.

Project names are generally never translated.

I think "Libre" is fine.

- It looks like Liberty in text, which is the main context it will be used in. Just tell people it's a "cool" modification of the word "Liberty".

- It carries the connotations of personal freedom (liberty) instead of financial freedom (free).

- People are actually using it right now, so most laymen would be able to google it and get some notion of what it is.

It looks like Liberty, but its not pronounced that way. And "people can google it" is true of anything.

It never ceases to amaze me just how authoritarian some "free software" advocates are! So many should's and bans being celebrated in this article. Even if the claims of the author are overblow as compared to the actual law it's fascinating to see how happy the author is to see organisations and individuals being restricted in what they can and can't do. Not sure how this squares with their claim that "Freedom is always superior", but hey.

This is a restriction on imposing restrictions on other people by requiring them to use proprietary software when e.g. filing taxes. It is not a requirement to use free software, but it is a requirement that if software need be used that it is free.

In this sense, the state agencies are disallowed from infringing on the public's rights, but are still free to ignore their own.

Objecting to citizens being required to pay a private company to submit their taxes or access services is wholly understandable and entirely valid. I think these things should be free (as in beer). Demanding that they use "free" software as defined by RMS or some acolyte to file their taxes or access services when there are other, potentially better, free (as in beer) or paid alternatives isn't.

> OUR ENEMIES WILL BE THERE

> Proprietary software companies are evil, and must be opposed. They know that if this bill passes, their days are numbered.

Doesn't seem to be very objective.

yep in particular because the article starts with an explicit statement about addressing a non-technical audience. Pro-tip, if you do that, don't try to sound like you're on a crusade.

>Now imagine that countries besides the US start doing it, inspired by the US’s success (and I think it will be a resounding success).

and on this point, I had personal experience with a project like this when Munich switched to open source software, which made quite a bit of noise, but in the end it was kind of a failure. And people still argue about the politics of it, but from talking to a lot of city workers personally there were just a lot of interoperability issues, bugs, and people didn't know how to use new software.

The success of these projects will come down to the most mundane thing imaginable, whether a lot of white collar workers can get their job done, not some Dune style jihad.

"starts with an explicit statement about addressing a non-technical audience. Pro-tip, if you do that, don't try to sound like you're on a crusade"

But when speaking to a technical audience the crusade style language is allright?

I would disagree, except if it is not meant too serious.

when you're speaking to an in-group who is familiar with the sort of personalities and attitudes and culture you get the context and the quirks and everyone moves past it so yes it doesn't really matter, if you know the sotware/hacker culture, you take weird attitudes with humor by default because people have always been a little bit odd. When you communicate to an outside group it's a different thing however.

by the way the fact that this nuance of being able to speak differently in different social circles is increasingly lost and replaced with PR department speak everywhere is pretty bad.

> Imagine a world where you’re no longer being spied on because NSA, Apple and Microsoft no longer have backdoor access to your computer.

I'm in NH so this actually affects me but this language is a bit much.

Are you sure it's a false statement?

I'm pretty sure that not requiring proprietary software to access public interfaces when dealing with my government is not going stop the five eyes to stop spying on me.

That's because my life does not solely revolve around my interactions with government. I am constantly required to use interfaces provided by private organizations, which can have whatever insane requirements that they wish.

Also, I have better things to do with my life then spend half of it excising non-FOSS software from all of my devices and appliances. If the Mossad can listen to me through my toaster prior to passage of this law, I'm afraid that they will still be able to listen to me after it. I suppose I could throw my toaster out and buy a non-Mossad-backdoored one, but how am I to be confident that the new one wasn't backdoored by Bangladesh or Pyongyang?

You can already choose to not be spied on by apple or ms. So this law changes nothing there.

You will continue to be spied on by the NSA either way so the law changes nothing there.

What the FSF is really saying here is that they wish to remove the choice you currently have to be spied on or not.

The blog post is a bit ... excitable. However, why not comment on the Bill itself:

https://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billT...

They're not wrong.

> 21-W:7 Role of Law Enforcement. No member of law enforcement in the state of New Hampshire, or any of its political subdivisions, shall assist federal law enforcement in any investigation or prosecution of copyright claims or other claims of intellectual property crimes brought by makers of proprietary software against makers of competing free and open software projects.

Granted, most IP is civil but preempting even investigation seems, er, overly broad.

I mean, it's a federal law, why should state law enforcement even be involved - especially if the state disagrees with the law that is being enforced?

Oh yeah, this isn't going to pass. Not with something ridiculous like this in there. I don't understand why this is in there. It seems like someone is trying to slip this past the lawmakers. So if someone steals Google proprietary code and puts it in their open-source project, and hosts it in New Hampshire, the state won't assist the feds track down the owner? What does that accomplish? How does that help legitimate open-source?

You can watch the public hearing for this here:

https://youtu.be/2Y-CBSNrAoA?t=5564

Starts about the 1:30 mark.

This could potentially have very interesting consequences for ML models. It will depend if their training data is considered part of the source code.

If there was a loss prevention specific video analytic that flagged a person’s behavior as abnormal, would the person have a right to audit the source code for the CNN and/or the training data that was used in the development of that analytic?

As someone working on such analytics it could become a real adventure to comply with that. My dataset came from customers that agreed to shared with positive/negative examples with me but not necessarily for me to share publicly. The privacy of the people in the shared examples would also need to be considered.

Wouldn't that just mean you'd have to make sure the data doesn't contain private identifying information to start with? Seems like a win-win for the people in datasets and the people who are auditing the code.

"Wouldn't that just mean you'd have to make sure the data doesn't contain private identifying information to start with"

That condition is not easy.

It is very hard, to have data about people related stuff, without private identifying information - especially because now there is face recognition and co.

Then ML simply isn't a viable solution to that problem?

> It will depend if their training data is considered part of the source code.

It has to be, otherwise you could argue that javascript is data dynamically loaded by an open-source browser.

The argument could be made that private ML training datasets with public consequences are a fundamental problem.

Why should they not? Compliance is hard even for very mundane things.

I found the Debian Deep Learning Team's Machine Learning policy (which covers this kind of stuff) very interesting:

https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/ml-policy

If the person does not have the right to audit the model - i.e. determine how and why exactly it flagged them - with consequences wrt government interaction with that purpose, I would argue that it's a violation of due process. If it's impossible to meet that standard with ML in a satisfactory way, then perhaps ML should not be used in those contexts at all?

What is the idea behind the immunity against copyright claims? How often does this (claims) happen and what is the problem that the bill is solving?

The New Hampshire legislature has a ‘liberty’ caucus composed of libertarians (but members of the Republican Party). This bill is sponsored by a very progressive democrat and another member who’s a physician who recently switched parties (R->D) basically because of the libertarian’s opposition to Covid policies. So it will be interesting how the “freedom” fighters vote on this bill given their tension with the bill’s sponsors.

This would be an absolute game changer! Go New Hampshire!

The New Hampshire legislature has a ‘liberty’ caucus composed of libertarians (but members of the Republican Party). This bill is sponsored by a very progress democrat and another member who’s a physician who recently switched parties (R->D) basically because of the libertarian’s opposition to Covid policies. So it will be interesting how the “freedom” fighters vote on this bill given their tension with the bill’s sponsors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com