[CAVO] OSET Foundation

Wed Sep 9 14:53:04 UTC 2015

Hi Greg, nice to meet you.

I can appreciate your goals of increasing government priority for election systems and for government procurement reform to make software acquisitions cheaper and easier. I've heard similar goals among CAVO participants.

As Richard Fontana and others have mentioned, acquisition of open source software by governments is now largely second nature and easy. That software is cooperatively developed by many non-profit 501(c)(3) and (6) foundations and distributed by a wide variety of commercial companies that are profitable. That is no longer a big issue in my own work with open source.

Far more troubling to me is your insistence on a new license. The worst thing that will do is fragment the developer community with battles that won't result in better software.

In any event, rather than restating your goals – which were well explained in your Rationale document – please respond directly to my own rationale memo explaining why GPLv3 is the most appropriate license for elections software. Do you disagree and why?

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss/2014-November/001580.html

Best regards,

/Larry

From: Gregory Miller [mailto:gmiller at osetfoundation.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2015 6:09 PM
To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
Cc: Christine Santoro <csantoro at osetfoundation.org>; Meeker, Heather J. <hmeeker at omm.com>; CAVO <cavo at opensource.org>; Meegan Gregg <meegan at osetfoundation.org>; legal at osetfoundation.org
Subject: Re: OSET Foundation

Hello Larry-

Weighing in here on your comment back to our General Counsel.  Thanks for your reply; bear in mind we're considerably down the road from "start-up" in some ways, yet despite our backgrounds and experiences, after 8-years we still feel much like a start-up.  

That's really because we've only just celebrated our 2nd anniversary of winning a nearly 7-year protracted IRS battle for our full tax exempt status as a 501.c.3 charitable organization. So, it can be cogently argued that we _are_ in some ways still very much a start-up as a non-profit foundation (although the determination was made effect of as of April 2007.)

We agree on the philosophy of "getting all the wood behind a single arrow," particularly in this unique sector of government I.T. reform and innovation. This particular type of technology carries with it a very important mantle of "critical democracy infrastructure" -- a mantle we hope might one day gain Congressional recognition.

We hope CAVO and like-kind advocacy groups can evangelize (more so than we legally can) 2 important ideas (one that certainly can and should reduce to legislation):

1. Government Priority:  That election technology is, in fact, "critical democracy infrastructure" (a phrase we coined several years ago in government relations work with both the House Rules and Senate Administration committee Chairs).  True recognition of such, at both State and Federal levels would, we believe elevate government's attention to the near desperate needs of jurisdictions to more easily acquire technology that has a greater priority and importance with government as a component of critical infrastructure.  That could translate into a number of helpful initiatives.  Now we are NOT advocates of another HAVA funding (we saw what happened to that $3B 13 years ago), but we do think affording election technology the same level of attention that other government I.T. receives with respect to its criticality and required operational continuity is urgent.

2. Procurement Reform:  That states and counties in particular need a holistic overhaul of procurement regulations.  Today's regulations not only lock out new and innovative prospective suppliers of technology by erecting artificial and fiscal barriers to entry in the form of (at times) draconian terms for bidding (e.g., monstrous performance and surety bonds), but they also hardwire archaic if not obsolete approach, process, and arguably philosophy about how technology is acquired (e.g., including licensing).

We considered this latter idea.  However, it meant a complete reinvention of ourselves and our mission because it is state-level hand-to-hand combat.  Aside from the U.C.C., there really isn't any uniform procurement regulation schema.  But there is some difficult and archaic thinking embedded in the contracting processes of I.T. procurement agencies.  And it would take a well lubricated advocacy engine to bring about that kind of change.  Perhaps CAVO is the answer.  There is precedent here too.  From our Board Advisers, to the EAC, to NIST, even to the Department of Homeland Security (btw: a source of funding in excess of $50,000 that our Counsel accidentally overlooked), and several States' Secretary Offices, there is a growing consensus that innovation is being illogically blocked by archaic procurement regulations.

[On that last note: one thing that seems to be building momentum for the recognition of "critical democracy infrastructure" is the engagement of Advisers to our Board who have a strong interest in this regard, and which has resulted in DHS taking a close look at some of our security software we're building for access framework to certain elections administration web services we're building.  So, there is some basis for advocacy in this regard.]

Best Regards

Greg

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

Thanks Christine, you've obviously done a good job with startup funding. :-)

One of the benefits of open source development is that we have an incentive to cooperate. I look forward to doing so.

/Larry

-- 

Gregory Miller
Co-Executive Director & Chief Development Officer
OSET Foundation | TrustTheVote Project
 <http://www.osetfoundation.org/> www.OSETFoundation.org |  <http://www.trustthevote.org/> www.trustthevote.org
Twitter: @TrustTheVote | @OSET

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