Buy Linux. It's the law

Pennington says that the companies may not want to mention their support publicly, but that in private conversations with representatives, some firms have seemed receptive and have offered to support his idea if it debuts in the legislature.

But will it even go to Sacramento? That's what Pennington can't predict. During the last few months, he's met with a handful of California lawmakers, and some press reports have characterized Assemblyman Juan Vargas and State Sen. Dede Alpert as being guardedly supportive of the bill. Representatives for both lawmakers said only that their aides had met with Pennington, but that they had not in any way expressed support. So far no lawmaker in Sacramento has agreed to sponsor the bill. California's legislative session ends on Aug. 31, so it's unlikely that the bill will be introduced this year.

And conversations with aides to California lawmakers make it questionable whether the bill will ever be introduced. One staffer who'd read Pennington's proposal was especially discouraging: "Why would the legislature decide what kind of software to buy?" he asked. "We don't know anything about software. Why would we decide using Oracle 8i [database software] is a better or worse system than something else?"

The staffer also wondered whether state governments -- which are not known for their organizational nimbleness -- could manage software projects on their own. "The state cannot retain IT professionals at all," he said. "We just can't pay them enough. If we have a contract with Oracle and they screw it up, we can sue them. If you have a problem with open-source software, as I understand it, folks get on their little message boards and talk about how to architect their problems. There are concerns with that: We're going to publish how our system works on some Web page?"

The idea that open-source software is strictly amateur hour is, as Pennington points out, somewhat behind the times. Open-source software has become not only a main offering of big tech firms like IBM and Sun but also the standard government software for countries across the globe. Legislation similar to Pennington's has been introduced -- has even passed -- in countries where IT budgets are much smaller than the $1 billion to $3 billion California spends each year on technology.

Kevin Terpstra, a spokesman for Clark Kelso, California's top IT official, offered a more positive view of the possibility of running the government on open source, but he still said the issue has to be carefully studied.

"From a practical standpoint doing something like this could pose some real concerns," Terpstra said. "The state has approximately 1,000 unique software applications. Some of these are part of legacy systems, some are unique to the state, some are off the shelf. To mandate that all purchases be open-source code would cause a lot of problems, unless it was phased in over a very long period of time and had a lot of contingencies built in."

Pennington says he's concerned that when California buys proprietary software, it's not getting all the "rights" to that software -- namely the right to tinker with the code, to maintain it, upgrade it, and to continue using it even if the proprietary software firm decides to stop supporting the applications. States are now effectively "leasing" the software they're buying, and with open-source, they could own the whole operation, he says. Other critics have pointed out that when a state or federal government buys Microsoft software, it is essentially subsidizing Bill Gates with taxpayer money. Wouldn't it be more politically appropriate to subsidize the development of open-source software, since everyone benefits from the constant improvement of software that is publicly available to all?

But Terpstra said Pennington's view is a "simplistic approach to the issue. It reflects a lack of understanding of what the true IT picture is in this state. I think he's recommending a cure for a problem that doesn't really exist."

That view is echoed by groups allied with the tech industry. "Any kind of situation where the government mandates a specific technology, chances are it's not a good approach to doing things. Clearly, legislators are not technologists, and market forces are going to be much more nimble in selecting technology," said Bob Cohen, an executive at the Information Technology Association of America, an IT industry trade group. And Emery Simon, general counsel of the Business Software Alliance, asks, "Do you use software? Have you ever looked at source code? Do you have any interest?"

Simon also disagrees with Tiemann's view that it is undemocratic for a government to make information available to its citizens only in proprietary file formats -- like Microsoft's Word format, for example. "If that were the sole format in which the information were available, maybe there's an argument," Cohen said. "But governments don't publish material in only one form. There are a whole lot of people who don't have computers. That argument goes to an absurd point, which is that the only way for democracy to function is for everyone to have the same thing."

Pennington acknowledges that such arguments from lawmakers and opponents of his idea will make it difficult for his bill to gain momentum. But he says that in the end, "capitalism and greed will cause it be successful. If I can show them that it will lower costs and increase competition, lawmakers will become interested."

Next Page: But doesn't legislating what code you can buy go against the fundamental principle of free software?

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