[kwlug-disc] OSS/linux politics

[Paul Nijjar]

On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 08:43:08PM -0400, Chris Frey wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 08:19:57PM -0400, Insurance Squared Inc. wrote:
> > If you were elected a local councillor, how would you integrate 
> > linux/OSS into the municipal structure?  And by integrate, I mean 
> > actually pull it off somehow, from within a rigid beauracractic structure?
> 


> I think the first job is to find out how much money is currently spent
> in the local public sector on proprietary software licenses alone.
> Then make that number public, categorized by each service in the city.

This is available in the city budgets. For example, see page 138 of
the following document (2009 budget for Kitchener)

http://www.kitchener.ca//en/insidecityhall/resources/2009ConsolidatedBudgetInformation.Pdf

I think the units are thousands of dollars, but I am not sure. 

I have stumbled across other material as well. I am pretty sure there
was a budget report that indicated big upgrade costs for proprietary
software. 

In other news, there are at least a few candidates that are interested
in Open Data initiatives. I have to look up who they are, though. 

- Paul (who will publish an election information page on his stupid
  website tomorrow, and has found the muncipal election here pretty
  dead)


-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org