Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

This page doesn't seem to be an accurate summary of what's in the bill.

The bill is much less far-reaching than suggested. Here's the most relevant part of the actual text:

"21-W:4 Mandatory Use of Proprietary Software Prohibited. No person in the state of New Hampshire shall be required to use proprietary software for any interaction with the government, including but not limited to: the filing or payment of taxes, remote appearance for court proceedings, the taking of standardized tests or the completion of coursework by school students, applying for or receiving unemployment benefits, or other similar benefits, unless the government agency has determined that the proprietary software is the only means available for the required interaction. In such cases, the agency shall post a notice of its determination and the use of proprietary software on the agency's website.

21-W:5 Proprietary Software on State Websites. No person in the state of New Hampshire shall be required to allow the execution of proprietary javascript in their browser when visiting websites administered by the state of New Hampshire. The department of information technology shall verify that this is the case for each executive branch agency via the use of browser extensions of their choice that are designed to detect and block the execution of proprietary javascript in their browsers, and by confirming that no proprietary java script blocks the functioning of any third-party online archiving services that are attempting to archive state websites."

The ONLY cases where it's banning non-free software is where the non-free software touches the citizens directly...where those citizens have to use or buy it. Could be tricky for some types of interactions, like allowing state employees to get paycheck stubs/records, Zoom-based court procedings, etc. But it's not broadly "banning non-free software".

https://gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billT...

The actual text of the bill seems very reasonable. Developing and using free and open source solutions can save taxpayer money when it reduces duplication of effort among governments. Software for the functions listed in 21-W:4 is also needed in other states, counties, and cities.

I hope the bill passes.

That's still pretty amazing. It's true, nobody should be required to use proprietary malware just to interact with government services. I'm happy to see somebody finally stepped up and wrote that into law. This will inspire more similar proposals.

So what will change, really? Surely people can already access all government services from a Linux PC with Firefox? Nobody has Flash or Java installed anymore, so I can't imagine they require those.

>> the taking of standardized tests

I hope the NH Bar is ready for this. Bar exams are almost universally administered through proprietary test-taking software. I think the key words are "shall be required". They will make a paper option available in some corner of an office somewhere, thus freeing them to use all the propriety software they want.

Yeah... looking at this it seems like there's still some gaping holes, for example specifying javascript in particular leaves WebAssembly open which is arguably worse than non-free javascript, and anything server-side is just ignored, like you said.

My gut feeling is that any reasonable court would see "JavaScript" and interpret it to include WASM as well.

The purpose of the bill is to ensure that all of the state's public touchpoints are free of proprietary software ownership. The subsection prior says that you shouldn't have to use proprietary software to interact with the government. Then they explicitly mention JavaScript to clarify that websites should also not load proprietary software onto people's computers, either. And WASM is specifically designed to integrate with JavaScript - in fact, it can't even be loaded without it.

The standard for interpretation of contracts and law is that, absent a specific definition of a term in the relevant document, you use the broadly-accepted definition of that term within that industry or endeavor. If you asked a bunch of web developers, "does 'no proprietary JavaScript' also mean 'no proprietary WASM'", they would almost certainly agree.

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