[vox-outreach] Re: Approaching Davis City Council regarding Linux and Open Source?

[Bill Kendrick]

Heh, this seemed to kind of fall flat.
I'm glad I kept it in my vox box.

Anyone interested in commenting on what Chris talks about, below?

Thx!

-bill!


On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 04:58:56PM -0800, Chris Jerdonek wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 22:39:27 -0800, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> > I'm pretty unfamiliar with city government, with respect to computer and
> > software usage, and have been hoping to spark a conversation here to
> > figure out how and where Linux might fit in to the City's plan.
> 
> I'm somewhat familiar with how things get done up at city hall.  It's all 
> about the study.  Basically, you first want to convince the city council 
> that it's worth it for them to do a study on switching to open-source.  
> I'm the one that knows Mike Harrington, and he's the one that could put 
> it on the city's agenda (provided he gets re-elected this March).
> 
> That study would determine the feasibility and savings of switching the 
> city's computers to open source Linux, etc.  If their study finds what 
> you'd expect it to find, then the council would likely vote to switch to 
> open-source.
> 
> It would be helpful for one of you to do some rough preliminary research:  
> call up city hall and see if you can find out what software they use and 
> how many computers they have.  Try to estimate how much they spend on 
> software, or maybe they could tell you exact budget figures.  The city's 
> budget is public record.  If it looks like there's a chance the city 
> would save $$, I'm sure they would do the study (they're looking for ways 
> to save money these days as you probably know).
> 
> Secondly, it would help if one of you folks who already knows the general
> arguments could take an hour or two to draft a half-page policy brief.  It 
> should summarize the case for this proposal:  Davis City Government 
> and the Davis Joint-Unified School District should switch to open-source 
> software.  Include proposal, background, advantages, precedents, and steps 
> to implementation.
> 
> If you wrote something like that, then other organizations could endorse 
> it and get behind it -- along with LUGOD.  For instance, the Yolo County 
> Green Party could back it and rally more support for it.  (I'm connected 
> with them.)  Open-source is in the spirit of grassroots democracy and 
> community-based economics etc., and that's what they're all about.
> 
> Can one of you make a couple phone calls to city hall to research what 
> their story is?
> 
> CHRIS
> 
> 
> -- 
> http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~jerdonek/ : (530) 297-6947
> 
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bill@newbreedsoftware.com | Milhouse, you ready to imitate that Jackass show?
newbreedsoftware.com/bill | All those disclaimers made me want to do it more!