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President Kennedy was famous for instructing Americans to 'ask not what what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' Here is one of the things I did not long ago. I sent this letter to all of my elect representatives.

Dear _______,

Government institutions should use Free and/or Open Source software (defined in link section below) over proprietary software whenever possible. There are many governments around the world that are adopting this policy and this is no surprise.

There are very good reasons for this, chief of which are that Free software, software with source code readily available to the public is more secure, reliable, and guaranteed to be around for a much longer period of time than its proprietary counterparts. This isn't just a philosophical stand, it the reality needed for mission-critical government services.

Computers become more and more integral to our lives everyday. Now is the time to take a long look at our public computer practices and to get them on track. There have been recent accounts of proprietary software vendors performing audits on government institutions which have resulted in huge financial penalties with respect to fines, restitution and long term contracts. A switch to using free software over proprietary where available will save taxpayers substantially in both the short and long term.

Worm viruses such as Melissa, Sircam, Nimbda, and the recent Klez are all the plague of a closed source, proprietary software system. The alternatives in the free software realm are not victim to these attacks, and therefore do not suffer the same lost productivity, frustration, and the expense of downtime.

Further, free software provides a common platform that truly promotes innovation in that the playing field is level for entrepreneurs to develop applications that connect citizen and government through open standards. The ability to read source code means control is in the hands of We the People and that government information systems are not bound by the whims of private entities.

This last point was brought home by a exchange of letters between a Peruvian congressman and a representative of Microsoft. The exchange was over a Peruvian bill called "Free Software in Public Administration". The MS spokesperson attacked the bill and the congressman countered with the most well thought out, clear, and comprehensive rebuttal that I have ever read on this topic. I have provided links to both letters below, but if I may highlight some of Congressman Dr. Villanueva's main points concerning the bill, he says its purpose is to provide:

Free access to public information by the citizen.
Permanence of public data.
Security of the State and citizens.

These principles are linked to citizen, via government, control of source code that guarantees the long-term viability of its information infrastructure, without regard to the blessings of proprietary software suppliers.

The link on Peru below is worth your time to read. In the interest of public policy I do not think these issues can be overlooked. Any move toward standardization on free software will surely see increased efficiency in the gears of government and citizen satisfaction in better use of tax dollars. Please respond to this email. I am anxious to continue the discussion and offer any other information you need.

I am a taxpayer in Washington State and I have eight years of computer networking experience. This list of links is supplied for your reference.

Sincerely,

Darryl Caldwell
(address and phone)

Links

The terms "free software" and "open source" describe software that is available in both binary and source code format. And both license users to copy, make changes, and use the source code in any way the user chooses. Neither are anti-commercial and many companies are making lots of money from free/open source software. The GNU General Public License is one of the most known forms of free software licensing. Both are 2 heads of the same coin in my opinion. "Free software" represents the phenomena from a community standpoint (free as in freedom), "open source" looks at it from a business model.

For more information on free software:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
For more on open source:
http://www.opensource.org/

Peru vs. Microsoft:
http://pimientolinux.com/peru2ms/
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51902,00.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25157.html

Microsoft Puts the Squeeze on NW schools
http://www.seul.org/edu/acpe2002.html

City of Largo, Florida converts to Open Source software:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2860180,00.html

France and Open Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/industry/11/27/french.open.source.idg/

Germany:
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,,6_408271,00.html

Other Governments:
CNET News story

Software Audits:
No justice from Microsoft for the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice
http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0415.license.html

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/07/03/1811211&mode;=nested

Why Austin TX is considering a Microsoft enterprise license
http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2001/0820.austin.html
http://www.austin360.com/aas/metro/041202/12prison.html

Interesting brochure on protecting organization from BSA audits:
http://www.samsrv.com/BSA_Truce.htm

Viruses and their financial damage:
Yahoo! News story
http://www.itp.net/news/99961205465223.htm
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16407.html
More Yahoo! News coverage

Some Free and Open Source software altenatives to proprietary ones:

Operating Systems and desktop environments:
www.linux.com
www.freebsd.org
www.kde.org
www.gnome.org

Productivity:
www.openoffice.org
www.koffice.org
www.gnome.org/gnome-office

Email:
http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/
http://kmail.kde.org/

Web Browser:
www.mozilla.org
www.galeon.org
www.konqueror.org

Web Server:
www.apache.org

Database:
www.mysql.org
www.postgresql.org