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.
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). And if testing discovers that it doesn't work, getting it to work isn't necessarily possible with the PDF editing tools available, as making their editors compatible with libre readers isn't exactly a priority for Adobe.
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.
Okular uses the poppler PDF library under the hood - and probably do most other non-Adobe implementations. Each software package is not a complete reimplementation of the standard, so it is not unexpected that they share behavior (and bugs).
If you can share the PDF we can file a bug report against poppler.
It’s not as bad currently, but 10 years ago it wasn’t that unusual to find things like government and bank websites using freaking ActiveX.
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.
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.
Are you aware of how common this type of behavior is? Where are you purposing to draw the line? Should we not even discuss local and state elections on the internet to prevent outside voices from swaying the views of voters? Should we not report on these elections?
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.
It's fine to discuss others' affairs, but actually going as far as to contact state representatives (read: spam them) when you aren't their constituent over stuff like this is a subversion of democracy.
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.
> But under no circumstances should you try to unilaterally influence
Why do you believe that to be true? I'm asking as an outside observer, I don't live in the US so I have no real interest in all this.
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?
>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?
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.
This feels more like an identity-politics-adjacent opinion. I don't think it's as unarguable as you're acting like to say that such a thing is corrupt. It's at worst an open question.
I remember my mother telling me a story of how she was dragged for interrogation after undercover cops overheard her and her friend talking about political situation in communist Poland.
It's a dangerous territory you're trying to propose.
Maybe, maybe not. Wouldn't surprise me if there are at least a few.
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.
It's not asking us to falsify votes or commit fraud or anything, just asking for people to sing the virtues of this approach.
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"?
Trade groups in the US routinely try to influence state legislation outside the state where they are domiciled, and sometimes outside the country.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
You can read their methodology in the bill text [0]. In short, there are 271 applications they found that must be brought into compliance and estimated the timeline and staffing costs based on similar recently completed projects.
I don't think the bill requires the server side to be open source. I think it is sufficient as long as the client side can use libre software to interact with the government. (But this is not explicitly stated in any of the links I followed.)
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.
> You could argue that the cost estimation is a worst-case scenario.
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.
The bill pegs the cost at nearly $300M/year for 5 years, with the funding coming from the state's "General Fund". According to the State of NH, that fund supports about $1.7B in total spending. There's no way a state with such a limited fund and desire for taxes is going to spend such a large percentage of the budget on that effort.
"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.
It's not a law that prohibits citizens from using proprietary software, it's a law that prohibits the government from doing it. But the government is the thing enforcing the law, so it's really just the government choosing not to use proprietary software itself.
You’re acting as if everyone in the New Hampshire government is making this decision when that is obviously not the case.
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.
This is no different than the executives of a company making the decision to use some particular software. Then the employees of the company use it, because that's their job. They don't have to; they can work somewhere else. The government has many monopolies but a source of employment isn't one.
I mean what are you proposing, some ideological principle that each government employee has to be able to choose their own governance software?
I mean there is a major difference between the executives of a company pushing the use of something in a private company and a bill being introduced too legally require the use of specific software within the government.
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.
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 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.
Why? There could be better ways to implement, like just applying this as systems meet their natural end of life rather than rewrites. If we're fine with ideological legislation, then why not for other things?
Was a NH resident for years (recent ones, even). Can't think of a single time I had to interact with a state agency that required proprietary software. It would stand out if I had.
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.
Same.
Former NH resident and have been a Linux / free software proponent for decades. For the most have not even had a functional Windows machine most of the time. Do not ever recall a scenario where I encountered some kind of proprietary software. We had multiple houses, cars, boats, dogs, other property. All kinds of things that I had to register or deal with the state on annually and can’t recall any issues.
>The closest I can even think of is if they're using Zoom for remote hearings?
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.
There are many web-based things that technically require Internet Explorer, even though other browsers seem to work fine. The real issue is likely that most of the things were built with IE in mind and only formally tested on IE. I feel like the real first step is simply to audit the functionality of these things in various browsers to see if they actually work properly or not.
As the state whose official motto is "live free or die", this might be the only place in the US where things like this may get noticed.
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.
>16 February 2023, 1PM: prohibiting, with limited exceptions, state agencies from requiring use of proprietary software in interactions with the public (house bill: HB 617-FN)
Seems pretty basic to me. What's concerning is that it isn't already law everywhere.
> … 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.
> 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.
>
So, does this bill mean that products like MS Office can’t be used in schools ...
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.
>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?
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.
> many people who use Matlab are something else first.
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.
I'm not sure I care what the typical employer wants to hear. If it's a taxpayer funded education then it's more about what society gets out of it. I can't speak for everybody, but I think what society wants is people who can solve problems whether or not they've been blessed by some third party with a license.
Agreed. This was such a stupid take that it’s going to turn off most who read it. I think the goal of the bill is great, but I wouldn’t take it seriously after reading this person’s take on it and would assume it was put forth by ideologues who have unrealistic expectations of how people actually live.
The author of this blog post does not appear to be in any way affiliated with the author of this bill, or even live in the US for that matter.
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.
I’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.
You don't get to just do it all at once. In the case of permits, for example, you could work towards something that documents agreements between groups of neighbors. My suggestion is that open source can be used to develop alternative governance structures, not that it is a free pass to get out of legal obligations.
The point is that legal obligations shouldn't mandate the use of proprietary software. There shouldn't be a government filing process that requires a proprietary application to fill in fields in a PDF or only accepts documents in Microsoft formats. Tax dollars should never go to Oracle.
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.
> Calling this “libre software” instead of “free software” seems very self-serving
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.
Perhaps. It's also possible that this reverses causality and that they use the product name "LibreOffice" because of the existing term "libre software", rather than using "libre software" primarily because that's what the product is called.
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".
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.
It's not that Linux/BSD don't offer the most freedom (though as many have pointed out MacOS is essentially BSD with an Apple WM/GUI). It's the snobbishness of saying 'only ____ makes you a TWUE PWOGWAMMER'.
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.
Well, you cannot directly “screw with the kernel” on Windows. I am not sure how that is keeping you from growing as a developer exactly though. You can write your own kernel from scratch using Windows as your host platform. And, of course, you can build a filesystem to use with Windows. You can even make it Open Source as well which many have.
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.
> 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.
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.)
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
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.
That's not true, at least for Windows. MS has published a lot of docs on their site, e.g.:
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.
I don't see new benefits to users as the user already has a choice in what computer they buy and what software to use. As far as I know, schools provide students with computers and if you use your own there are already ways to work with different file formats. I use OSS on MacOS all the time, works fine.
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.
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 hardware (Apple) but not really to sell software itself.
Yet somehow, they're much more monetarily successful than the other professions, both individually and as a field.
> 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.
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.
> Programmers provide free labor to first world corporations worth millions of dolars.
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.
Yep. The ideology around foss developed as it did precisely because it's original proponents did not have to make a living from developing and selling software, but were instead academics who already had an income from elsewhere (tenure, grants, mummy and daddy etc.)
There are so many people out there who are now technology practitioners because they had a chance to self-train on the same tools that professionals use, which are freely available at no cost since paid software is vastly more expensive than they could ever hope to afford.
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.
The purpose of a profession is to add useful value to the world not to extract as much value from it and give as little as possible. People don't need "software" they need services and products that in turn are enabled by software which is why in general why the production of software is highly paid.
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