[legislation-discuss] Update on status of Free Software legislation in New Hampshire

[Eric Gallager]

Hello Free Software Activists, it's the filing period for new legislation in New Hampshire, so I'm here with an update on the status of Software Freedom legislation that I'm working on. First, the bills I already tried in the first year of this term:

  *   HB67, a right to review source code of software used to generate evidence in criminal cases
  *   HB327, essentially a "LibreJS-compatibility for state websites" bill
  *   HB366, to end the practice of employers using noncompete clauses and nondisclosure agreements to prevent their employees from contributing to FOSS projects
  *   HB556, making the state's IT council more FOSS-focused
  *   HB589, essentially making NH a "sanctuary state" for FOSS developers fleeing persecution from overly litigious proprietary software developers
  *   HB617, preventing the state from requiring the use of proprietary software in interactions with the public

None of these bills passed, meaning that I cannot bring them back in the second year of this term. This means that I will have to get a bit more creative for the second year of this term, and try new things that are "substantially different" from the existing ones. Some ideas I'm considering for this year:

  *   Since the "right to review source code in criminal cases" bill didn't pass this year, I'm considering other types of court proceedings where a "right to inspect" could be added. Specifically, I'm thinking of doing a crossover bill to tie in with my interest in housing to add a right to inspect source code in eviction proceedings, in response to reporting by ProPublica about the use of the proprietary software "Yieldstar" to set rent: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
  *   I had another bill last year that I withdrew while it was still in the LSR ("Legislative Support Request") phase; it was about data portability, and I've found out that since I withdrew it before it became a bill, I can still give it another try.
  *   I put in some new research requests with my legislature's Office of Legislative Services, and some of the information I got back from them has me looking more closely at NH RSA Title I Chapter 21-R, relative to the Department of Information Technology: https://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/I/21-R/21-R-mrg.htm I intend to take a closer look at this chapter of the RSAs to see if there is any further tweaking that I can do of definitions, procurement procedures, and other similar policies; suggestions for edits here are welcome (provided they're not for the part that I already tried editing in a previous bill)
  *   I'm considering filing legislation improving privacy protections for the state's autism registry, and intend to see if I can include something about Software Freedom in there while I'm at it.

Anyways, that's about all I've got so far; note that I keep my legislation ideas in a repository on GitHub, so the ones that are most likely to be relevant here would be in the "tech" subdirectory of it: https://github.com/cooljeanius/legislation/tree/master/tech
I'm aware that the SFC is urging people to "Get Off GitHub", but I haven't done so yet; if there's an alternative git hosting service that you'd like to see me also make this repository available on, I'm open to suggestions. Also note that the filing period for new legislation closes on Friday at the end of business hours (5PM Eastern) this week, so any suggestions received after that will have to wait until later. (Sorry, I meant to send this sooner, but got distracted with a bunch of stuff)

Thanks,
Eric Gallager

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