From: Chip Rosenthal [mailto:chip@unicom.com]

Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 6:46 PM

To: sb1579@effaustin.org

Subject: [sb1579] hearing went well





We had our hearing of SB 1579 in front of the Senate Committee on State
Affairs. The hearing went well. In fact, I think we hit a home run.



Sen. Carona has put forward a substitute bill. That means what we've
been looking at as SB 1579 no longer exists. The substitute bill is
much simpler. It just adds the following paragraph to Texas law:

The [Department of Information Resources] shall publish guidelines
relating to the information a state agency must consider in
determining whether the agency should acquire open source software
products in addition to proprietary software products.

While the original bill was directed to state agencies, the substitute
instead targets DIR. That does represent a pretty significant scaling
back, but we're still standing behind it.



There are several things I like about this:

• DIR is already an OSS supporter. They want to see it more widely
  used. This may get them some more leverage towards that.
  
  
• I'm not sure this bill rises to the level of "legislative intent",
  but if it becomes law, it does put onto the books the legislature's
  desire to explore OSS offerings.
  
  
• This bill will result in a study. There will be results from that
  study published about the time we are all thinking about the
  next biennium. A good study could help build momentem towards
  a broader law. In fact, the high point of the hearing was when
  Sen. Carona told the Business Software Alliance they had better
  learn to cope with this bill, because he has even bigger plans
  for two years from now.
  

Because the bill was scaled back and the committee members seemed
predisposed to be favorable, we went very very light on the oral
testimony. The only people to speak were me and Bo Kersey, founder
of VirCIO. My testimony must have been all of 20 seconds, and Bo spoke
for just a minute.



We had two (so-called) resource witnesses, experts available to testify
on the bill. They were Prof. Don Fussell (from Computer Science)
and Prof. Don Turnbull (from School of Info and EFF-Austin V.P.).
Another professor from the C.S. school signed in as a resource. I did
not catch his name ... if anybody knows who it was please send our thanks.
None of the resource witnesses were called to testify, but their presence
added significant gravity to our arguments.



Several of our supporters signed cards. I heard Joe Barr and Paul Elliot
called out. May have been others.



As far as the other side, there were three witnesses to testify.
Basically, they were the industry groups you'd expect. Their testimony
was not well received by the chair.



In all, the committee was receptive to our offering, and very skeptical
of the opposition. I think this bodes well for us.



So, in summary, we did good. But let's not get too cocky. First,
we cleared a hurdle, but there are another good 6-8 such events before
this thing happens. Second, part of the reason for our success is that
the opposition was caught off guard by the substitute. Their arguemnts
were completely inappropriate. If they decide to press the opposition,
they will arrive much better prepared next time.



As far as those many hurdles I mentioned .. the two immediate ones are
the committee vote on the bill (may happen if they get a quorom today)
and companion legislation be introduced in the House. We've made progress,
but there's still a way to go.



P.S. You can watch the hearing yourself once it gets archived to the
web site: http://www.senate.state.tx.us/bin/live.php