Civic Engagement

Think of the large amounts of money that could be saved when working solely with free software as opposed to the quite expensive versions that are in use at the moment.

Proprietary software would allow a private company to keep our Commonwealth hostage. No company, no matter how large or successful, should be given such power - much less at taxpayer's expense.

Freedom Technology is Democracy.

Free Software gives the state more bang for its buck. It is also more secure than non-free software. It's also the right thing to do.

Free Software is more than freedom for software developers and users; it enables revolutionary business models where software development receives cooperation from outside of the organization while benefiting the user community in general.

The Free Software Foundation and movement was born here; for over 200 years Massachusetts has been the vanguard for freedom!

The recent vote-buying by Microsoft in the ISO standardization process shows that "open formats" is not enough.

If there were no viable alternative to proprietary software, then there would be no issue. But since there is an excellent option to choose freely available software to create and manage documents, with no loss of capability, it is simply time to make the right move.

Certainly there will be a one-time cost to execute the changeover. But once it is underway, there will be no longing glances over the shoulder at the proprietary past.

The tools used create and view public documents should be publicly available.

Proprietary software is the scourge of a freedom-loving culture.

What is most vital is for the state not to require citizens to use non-free software in order to access state documents or services. I recall once being unable to file my taxes online (it might not have been in Massachusetts) since I had to be running either a Microsoft or Apple operating system. This is tantamount to being told I can't use state roads because I'm not driving a Ford or a Volkswagen. Distributing information in proprietary formats (such as Microsoft .doc) is equally bad.

The role of the government is to support the public interest, and the government can further this goal by using free software. First of all, it tends to cost less. It's irresponsible (and generally illegal) for the state to give contracts to anyone but the lowest bidder without justification. Software purchases should be subjected to similar scrutiny: paying excessive fees to run Microsoft Office on a Windows machine should be seen as an irresponsible way for the state to spend ...

Free software would lower prices and is more stable then current paid and non-free software

With all the money saved, think of all the additional school funding.

"Free as in Freedom, Not as in Free Beer"- Richard Stallman, GNU.org

Public computers and databases should be built with open source software. This is important for democracy. Industry cannot and should not control software, databases, protocols, and so forth, by using proprietary schemes. Open Source software is much more appropriate for a democracy! We cannot be allow our government to be held hostage by proprietary formats and licensing fees forced on us by monopolies. Open source is the democratic way.

In order to better serve the public interest, government should, wherever possible, use transparent, free and open software instead of closed, corporate, proprietary, restrictive, and expensive options.

Since (to my knowledge) a vast array of robust free software solutions exist to all problems, I support Massachusetts using free software exclusively. This state can become a leader in the migration of all public administration to software that serve the public interest.

My thanks go to Binary Freedom for raising this issue.

Indeed, government websites need to work for everyone, not just those who use the most restrictive, expensive software. I wish news sites would get the hint as well.

I am a computer science major at Umass Boston as well as run a small IT firm and tech help site. I use open source software almost exclusively. Its benefits to portability, flexibility and security place far ahead of any closed software. I would especially suspect this to be true in areas such as government where being locking in to a single company greatly limits the openness and competition citizens are coming to expect.

Transparency is critical to having a government accountable to its people. We the people cannot understand how our government functions if proprietary software prevents even government officials from understanding it (for a fine example of this, consider electronic voting machines).

We need to have full control over our software paid for with state dollars-- not be hostage to any corporation.

Yes, this is an important issue. There are excelente alternatives in free software including Open Source Egovernment software that could be used in all of the different cities in the states to allow them to have full digital processes online. Have a look at www.processmaker.com which will be open source in 90 days and allows the creation of any type of government process (workflow, forms, output documents).

Massachusetts should not create (actually, it has already created) a state-sponsored monopoly. If MA uses non-Free software, it must pay whatever rates the vendor requires as switching becomes essentially impossible. Competition suffers, prices rise (and therefore either services decrease or taxes rise), and perhaps most importantly, the citizens of the state cannot as easily participate in their government. Citizen participation in their government is of immeasurable value - please do not sacrifice this important staple of democracy for vendor lock in with supposed value that I cannot even comprehend.

Thank you.

Free Software will transfer money spent on software from being sent out of state to being spent on administrators who will much more likely spend it in state.

Open standards are more important that open source, as they free us from single-vendor lock-in. But free software/open source holds many benefits as well, including but not limited to: low cost (free software support is cheaper than proprietary licenses); long-term maintenance (closed source -> abandoned -> dead); security and privacy verification (no hidden backdoors, faster patches); fixes and new features not dependent on the whim of a single vendor; business for local programmers (FSF, Novell, OLPC, Opennovation are MA-based); library access provides unlimited free installation; runs on old computers long since abandoned by Microsoft and Apple; computer education (e.g. the OLPC "View Source" button); and many more.

Proprietary software should be used only when no open source tool exists or can be affordably expanded (for less than the market cost of the required licenses) to meet a given need.

Freedom of Information means nothing if the keys to that information aren't free.

Every argument I have heard against Free Software is equally applicable to commercial software - all programs have some bugs, all have some flaws, all have some limitations. The difference is that with commercial software, these problems are hidden behind a cloak of secrecy, while in Free Software they are open so we know just how secure our systems and data are.

I support this to limited extent, we should use ODF not OOXML, we should embrace Open source programs liek Open Office, Ubuntu linux, that offer corperate solutions at fractions the cost, it also increases reliability over windows.

Free / open software should be used whenever a robust equivalent to proprietary software is available -- which is most of the time. This is the only way to be reasonably sure that there are no hidden surprises.

Not restricting the citizens of Massachusetts to a limited set of proprietary software that is not even provided free of charge (even considering how vital it has become), is very important. Personally, I support the move to OpenDocument the most, since it would enable Massachusetts to standardize documents without providing a monopoly to a single corporation.