New Hampshire on the cusp of enshrining software freedom into law
libreboot.org
libreboot.org
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These days I would imagine it means things like not publishing videos with (only) proprietary codecs, or using some sort of non-standard non-open 2fa or something.
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.
If you can share the PDF we can file a bug report against poppler.
I'll see if I can find it ...
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.
Corporations from other states and countries who don't like this bill make use of that. Proponents can too.
There is nothing fair about a state vote corrupted by voices outside of the state, let alone outside of the country.
But under no circumstances should you try to unilaterally influence or coerce him in some way. That's overstepping the line.
What line?
But, since things are interconnected, and a state isn't just some lonely abstract entity, isn't in your interest to try push for things that are good overall?
Why shouldn't I try to convince people that a certain change is a good thing, even if that change doesn't influence me directly?
States are separate for a reason, the people of each state want to do things their own way. For the things we can all agree nationally there is the federal government, but for everything else it's separated at the state level so we step on as few toes as possible.
Spamming a New Hampshire state representative when you aren't in New Hampshire, let alone not in the US, subverts democracy by violating state and possibly country lines.
Still, to push your reasoning, what if I’m not in NH but I plan to move there in the near future from a neighboring state?
What if I’m planning to move there from another country?
What if the move is not certain but I’m just considering the possibility?
Also, what if I simply think something is a good thing and I want to help promote it?
A free and fair election is about ensuring that eligible voters are informed, that they have access to the ballot box, and that those ballots are accurately counted.
You may or may not like what's going on in New Hampshire, but if you aren't a New Hampshire resident with voting rights you don't get to have any say in their affairs.
It's a dangerous territory you're trying to propose.
What OP and the article are asking is for someone in, say, Belgium or Canada or Texas to go and contact a New Hampshire state representative about a strictly New Hampshire state affair. Talk about making unnecessary and inappropriate noise for New Hampshire's democracy.
As an analogy, say Colorado passed a law that New Hampshire is also considering passing. In that case would you consider it interference for people from Colorado to speak in New Hampshire saying "You guys shouldn't pass this, it worked out poorly for us in Colorado"?
Generally speaking: Yes.
Should people not be allowed to read those opinions, or should writers outside the state not be allowed to write them?
Likewise, what scale of input on elections is considered too small to ban? Is criticizing the policies or politics of other states allowed at all?
I could not disagree with your view more, but I'm genuinely curious how you're thinking about this issue and what you'd want to see in practice.
For example, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), founded by Microsoft, operates in over 30 countries. It engages in both lobbying and litigation, around the US and around the world. Individual companies engage in lobbying outside of trade groups as well.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240234078/Government-op...
The irony of the parent comment is that "tech" companies, the ones that disseminate proprietary software, have done and continue to do more to "subvert democracy" than any individual in history has ever done, and they do this more or less free from civil liability or criminal prosecution.
This bill is interesting because, as it currently reads, it does not force the state to use non-proprietary software. It is not stopping the state from purchasing Microsoft software licenses, for example. Instead it prohibits the state from forcing the residents of NH to use proprietary software in order to interact with the state agencies:
"21-W:1 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 of proprietary software use, the agency shall post a notice of its determination and the use of proprietary software on the agency's website."
This is a topic that comes up on HN with moderate frequency. For example, a website tries to force the user to use a specific client, which is effectively proprietary software under the control of a "tech" company.
The client might be a Big Tech advertising-sponsored web browser that no one except Big Tech employees ever audits, modifies or compiles, regardless of whether the source code is available. It might be a closed mobile app that pins TLS certificates to stop anyone from observing what data it records about its user and sends to the "tech" company, sometimes called "phoning home" to the "mothership".
The website might use something like Cloudflare in the name of "protection" primarily to restrict clients to a certain browsers controlled by Big Tech that can be leveraged against users (ad targets) for data collection, surveillance and advertising.
https://www.cloudflare.com/solutions/protect-websites-applic...
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.
It probably should be. What might improve the bill is trying to get a similar bill passed in a few other state legislatures and working with them as a group to lower costs.
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 code had to be open source.
[0] https://gencourt.state.nh.us/lsr_search/billText.aspx?id=188...
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.
Another comment mentions fillable PDFs not working in non-Adobe software. This seems like the most likely culprit to me. And in general, if someone has to go back over the entire surface area of an application and re-test everything to find all the quirks like this, I can start to understand how that huge cost estimate might make sense.
I guess there are all kinds of aspects of the government I'm not even aware of, but still... Everything I see is always browser-based with maybe some PDFs. What even is "NH FIRST (statewide ERP)"? Why does the general public interact with an ERP at all? I'm assuming this bill means that individuals should not be compelled to use proprietary software, but if it includes businesses also then the price tag makes more sense.
Freedom isn't free.
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 heavy handed. Doesn't that reduce the ability of a specific agency to choose either the best or just what people are familiar with (which means what people will be effective with) software for a given task/department?
Or am I completely misreading what this is saying?
Advocating and educating people on open source or free available software is a good thing, but straight up requiring its use if it exists seems really bad and kinda counter to the culture that this kind of software should have.
The government wanting to use libre software and passing a bill saying that it shall use libre software is not that.
This sounds like it is requiring the use libra software even if the alternative is superior.
Someone (or a group of people) decided to push a bill with their ideals that will impact everyone who works a government job in NH.
So again this very much sounds like it is forcing people to use certain software instead of allowing a team or agency to be able to determine what is best for them.
This is no better than a bill requiring the use of software from Microsoft and should not be encouraged. I would even argue it’s worse since it seems it’s being done under the idea of “freedom” when it’s obviously not actually for that.
I mean what are you proposing, some ideological principle that each government employee has to be able to choose their own governance software?
I don't particularly care what a private entity does, especially when that could be changed with relative ease.
But a bill being signed into law is completely different. Not only is this public and I want the government to be efficient and be able to make the right decision for a given organization within the government.
No I am not proposing that each government employee chooses the software that they want to use. I am saying that a given organization within the government should be able to choose the right software for whatever it is that they are tasked to do not be dictated by a law that is pushing an ideological idea about software.
Especially when that article states that they hope schools too.
The government is not a single entity. What works for one part of the government doesn't mean it is right for another. And yes you can make that argument about a private company and executes, but again there is a major difference between a private company pushing something internally and a public government pushing something that may mean it runs less efficiently since each part of the government did not have the ability to make that decision for themselves.
What particularly bothers me about this, is if there was truly a desire to use software like this. Then this bill would not be necessary. Maybe a bill to cover the costs to do some conversions, but those lines would not be necessary if people actually wanted to do it. But from my prospective this bill is trying to legally require something's use internally and that is too heavy handed in my opinion.
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 the software licenses. [1]
Do the people of New Hampshire believe so strongly in using non-proprietary software that they're willing to take on this extra cost? Is there widespread support and understanding of free or libre software amongst the population?
My experience has been that people have a transactional relationship to software, not a values-based one. Which is the main reason the various free software movements have yet to gain wide spread traction. People don't seem to care about how software is created and how it is licensed but whether it meets a particular need. (I need to file my taxes. I want to listen to music. I want to book a reservation, etc.) The challenge is not necessarily to "make software free" but to first get people to view software through a holistic, non-transactional lens.
The hurdle for this legislation will be convincing legislators to spend $1.47bn on a software replacement that doesn't add any additional features. I mean, are citizens really going to care that the web-based interface they use to file their taxes is no longer using proprietary software under the hood? If they're viewing software through the transactional lens then this plan will seem wasteful and non-productive.
[1] https://gencourt.state.nh.us/lsr_search/billText.aspx?id=188...
If it doesn't provide any benefits, then this is a philosophical change. Seems almost like a case for separation of church and state.
The closest I can even think of is if they're using Zoom for remote hearings? Never had to have a hearing about anything.
This seems like a solution in search of a problem.
As a Linux user, I don't even have a problem with this personally. Zoom is a free download, or you can use it in a browser (the native application works a lot better though). It may not be FOSS, but it doesn't keep me from using Linux, or require me to pay anything to attend a meeting. The FOSS alternatives to Zoom honestly are not good, especially if you're dealing with some kind of meeting with dozens or hundreds of participants. Even MS Teams works OK for Linux users; you just use it in a browser window.
With so much stuff working in browsers these days, OS choice just isn't the problem it used to be 15-20 years ago. The only thing I can think of offhand where I had a problem was with a fillable PDF form I had to use for work a year or two ago: only actual Adobe software would work. I ended up having to use Wine, and even then had a lot of trouble.
Suffice it to say this problem doesn't require a government solution.
That said, given how I've been mainly on the Windows side for the past decades and that hasn't stopped me from learning or being in control (although that is increasingly being taken away by the excuse of "security"), maybe enshrining the right to reverse-engineer and modify proprietary software is more important.
Ironically, the Libreboot logo is remarkably reminiscent of John Deere's.
Seems pretty basic to me. What's concerning is that it isn't already law everywhere.
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.
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.
Not gonna fly with over 50% of engineers. For a good reason too
Wouldn't that be sensible though?
If the software is gratis and FOSS, then all the children can use it in whatever context they want.
This is not true for MacOS or Windows. People may not own MacOS devices or have the money for the licenses.
If a private company tricked your school into training you on their stack... that's not an education, it's an ad (and corruption to boot). If you job wants to use MATLAB, they can train you on MATLAB. Your python/octave/whatever skills will transfer.
I used to think everybody using Matlab thinks like a programmer. The problem is that many people who use Matlab are something else first. Matlab is just the tool available to them that has a very specific set of functionality and a GUI to make it somewhat accessible. Octave is a great piece of software but I stopped championing for others after knowing enough scientists that just want to use a library for a minute that only works in Matlab because of some quirk or special function that doesn't exist in Octave.
Another reason this doesn't quite work in practice is the interview. Imagine, potential employer asks if you have ever used Matlab. Two potential responses here: 1) No, I've used octave though. 2) Yes.
Both are good answers but, convince me the typical employer wants to hear 1 over 2.
Pretty much, they're lab techs, engineers, physicists, etc. who gather and work with data as a primary role more so than programmers.
> convince me the typical employer wants to hear 1 over 2.
I can't, typically they're indifferent and they'll even take someone who has worked mainly with R.
In my own experience a typical employer who asks about Matlab is seeking numerically competant employees to work with data, to create and look at plots and graphs, to run simulations, etc.
They're typically more concerned with a prospects potential to do the role than they are with the specific tools used in the past, and will generally ask if prospects think they can work with in house tools or about the cost of bring tools the prospect wants to use in house.
The head of the libreboot project has been involved in some controversy in the past, and I'm presuming this was written by her. It's not surprising to see her phrase this in some indelicate ways, given past hot takes, but I don't think you should let that affect your opinion on the bill itself too much.
It means that the courts, government, etc. cannot require a form or document be submitted in Word format; their website can't require Internet Explorer or Chrome to be usable; stuff like that.
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.
> 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?
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.
You can see this to some extent in other professions. Cardiologists and neurosurgeons get paid big bucks because their job is life or death stuff and requires skill and innovation. But would you want to work with a cardiologist that goes around sneering at every other kind of medical professional and saying they're not real doctors? Of course not, because they're assholes and when people like that screw up they'll blame their colleagues or patient rather than admit fault.
Back in the tech context, you can pursue authenticity into absurdity. You're not a real programmer unless you use (language). You're not a real programmer unless you contribute the language. You're not a real programmer unless you get into kernel hacking. Sure, you call yourself a programmer, but do you even assembler? Programming? Sorry, I design chips. Chips? Do you even basic circuit designs. Me, I roll my own capacitors built from carbon nanotubes...and so on up through materials science, physics, and mathematics.
What APIs were you using? I haven’t used Java in a while but one of the main attractions for me was that I could download and read the source code. (I’d been in the closed-source Microsoft ecosystem before that.)
If you do want to “screw” with the system on Windows, one option would be to replace the MS stuff one DLL at a time. You might take a DLL from ReactOS for example and make it work with your version of Windows, extending or altering it as you desire.
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.
There isn't really any good detailed up to date documentation online about either.
That's not true, at least for Windows. MS has published a lot of docs on their site, e.g.:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/i...
What does get in the way with newer versions of Windows is driver signing, but that's not a huge obstacle.
How so?
When talking to a non-technical audience my experience has been that the term "free software" is misinterpreted more often than not. If a name always requires an ancillary explanation ("...as in freedom, not beer") and collides with a common and wildly different meaning then it is not a good name.
"Open Source" advocates realized early on that the name was a fatal liability and switched to a significantly better one.
Trying to rebrand free (as in freedom) software movement as "libre" is probably too little, too late but I don't think it hurts to try.
After all, "libre software" has been used in English since the 1990s, the EU was writing legislation about libre software in the 2000s, the Free Software Foundation has hosted an annual LibrePlanet conference since 2006, and even gnu.org recommends using terms like "free (libre) software".
US government data.gov provides many formats that require neither Apple nor Windows. File your taxes using a pen, envelope and stamp or use the online sites - no proprietary software needed. Use forms online through their web portal. I'm just not seeing where the friction is here to require a law.
>>If no laws exist that protect libre software projects, then they are vulnerable.
How so? People picking MacOS/Win over Linux because it's easier for them is a choice we already have. If you want to mess around with Linux, knock yourself out, but my parents won't. It also seem to want to force MacOS and Windows source code to be available for anyone to browse (poach)
>>because if states stop relying on proprietary software licenses, the money they currently spend on that can instead be spent elsewhere, or on paying programmers
That is what I'm already assuming I'm doing by buying MacOS because Apple pays the programmers that create their software that I choose to buy. So I'm supporting the programmers that made the software I use, as are the states when they pay Microsoft or who ever.
A less directly related concern I have is that it reads as an outside group meddling with US law in order to force/manipulate a cascading effect, presumably because whatever country they are from is going to follow the US? Or on a less conspiral thought, it's abusing US law for something better severed by Marketing.
>>I once again call to action, any person that lives in New Hampshire or the surrounding states in the USA. Your participation could help secure the rights of all libre software users and developers, well into the future. I myself do not live in the US, so I’m hoping that my American readers will listen well to what I have to say. [*note i appreciate the disclosure]
>>...it will provide the libre software movement a foot in the door, that could lead to greater reform at a later date, and strengthen the entire movement. This is because of the knock-on effect it would have: as more people benefit from it, more states (in the US) and countries outside of the US may follow, implementing similar laws.
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 hardware (Apple) but not really to sell software itself.
There is more to life than merely maximizing one's bargaining leverage.
The equivalent of this for doctors is called residency. It's an early stage in their career, during which they're laboring for free or being severely underpaid, in exchange for (sometimes) some experience, and finally for a stamp that certifies they're the real deal now - which lets them start charging for their labor properly.
Software career progression is less streamlined and less credentialized - there are many paths to necessary skills, and many ways of proving you have them. Open source work is one way to credibly demonstrate the necessary skills, and can substitute for or complement your education or work history in your quest for negotiating a higher salary.
Programmers aren't stupid, we are fortunate that we can make our living using the software we build rather than being forced to sell it.
Open-source software is a gift to the world and humanity. But of course there is going to be the peanut gallery that thinks everything should be profitized.
> Programmers go out of their way to devalue the result of their work (software)
Here's where I think you're wrong. Programmers, like doctors and lawyers and actors and other professionals, are ultimately being paid for their labor, not the result of it. Result is the desirable thing, but from the professional's point of view, it's just a side effect.
You may think otherwise when looking at e.g. doctors and lawyers, but that's because the results is almost always one-off and thus impossible to copy. When a doctor diagnoses and cures my condition, it's not something I can pirate and reuse the next time, or give to a friend. When a lawyer writes a document for me, I may be able to reuse or share that document, but the actual value is in that lawyer's signature - or provenance in general.
Software is free on the margin. So are musical pieces, movies, TV shows, etc., which is why there's a lot of whining of artists (and/or their publishers) about the Internet killing them, etc. But, again, those artifacts are just side effects for the profession. Money is being made on selling labor.
From that point of view, if you ignore the utopian ideals and the general pay-it-forward morality, FLOSS is still perfectly sensible thing for the profession: software is free on the margin, therefore worthless to sell directly - but it makes sense for you to make more of it, because it's a credible signal of your competence. That is, the way most people make money on FLOSS contributions is by using those contributions to build reputation and relationships, and then leveraging those to increase the amount of money they can charge for their labor.
Or, in other words, at the individual level, the software profession lives by a generalized form of CV-driven development.