In the newest issue of Charlottesville weekly The Hook, Courteney Stuart writes about Del. Mitch Van Yahres’ efforts to convince the state of Virginia to use open source software through the ill-fated HB 842 (“Back at it: Waldo brings Microsoft calling“). Although Courteney gives me way too much credit (I pitched the idea to Mitch, writing up a brief on the topic for him, and that was that; getting a bill passed takes work, to which Tom McCrystal [cited in the article] will attest), she does a good job of addressing the technical and legal issues. Which is to be appreciated, because, for the nontechnical, articles about technical issues are tough to write about. (My favorite was when Charlottesville’s NBC affiliate did a story on the CPHack case with the primary message of “Waldo thinks kids should look at porn.” And that was with an intelligent, sympathetic, well-intentioned reporter.)
All of this is by no means a settled matter, however. Tom would like to get started soon on laying the groundwork to get a substantive open source bill passed in the 2005 General Assembly session. Given Microsoft’s serious reaction to Mitch relatively innocuous bill, it’s certainly not too early.