I'm interested in the private prison data, and will look into it. As I said, I'm not convinced and perhaps that data will help make up my mind.

ALEC has a lot of 'legislative' code, not all of which I agree with... but some I do. I also don't install every package in Debian, just what I want... different strokes for different folks. ALEC advocates a perspective. Sometimes I agree, sometimes not.

As for minimum wages laws, basic economics shows why minimum wages are broken and wrong. Pick up some Austrian economic books, and prepare to change your worldview.

The value of the dollar is dropping for many reasons, and minimum wage is one of those reasons... You have cause and effect reversed... the elderly having to go out is BECAUSE of the minimum wage, not in spite of it.

And my 'basic assumptions' are that force is wrong, that individuals make better decisions than government agents can make for them, that the right to contract, the right to property, and the right to control your own body are paramount rights...
Libertarians start with principles, and arrive at solutions that follow from principles. Sadly, few other political views do, they get 'ideas' about what is right, and then to try put the square pegs into the round holes...

I am in favor of marijuana legislation, yes, and sponsored a few bills in that vein, and support pretty much all of the 5 or 6 bills this year in NH to do something (medical, decrim, tax/regulate, industrial hemp (prime sponsor on one), and reducing criminal charges (prime on that one)

  I'm also against both war and capital punishment.

As for minimum wage laws, pensions, food stamps, and all of the rest, you are right, you wouldn't want to vote for me, I want to end Social Security, as it's a pyramid scheme, and you want it to continue, because you are about to cash in on it.

There is a fundamental natural right to practice a vocation. But Right to Work laws are even more simple: You do not have the right to force someone else to pay you for the privilege of having his job, and despite that forced unionism is supposed to be over, the 'fair share' dues requires are the same in a different name. Just because 80% or 90% of the workers choose to organize, the remaining folks should be _forced_ to go along.

I don't hate Unions, I think RTW makes unions EARN their place, by making it so the only people who pay for them WANT to pay for them, making them get better and be worthwhile.

And I'm against the PATRIOT Act, etc...

So, despite that you wouldn't vote for me, plenty of others would. I'm a Republican in the vein of Ron Paul... and so far, he's doing quite well. (And while I disagree in minor ways with him, he's the only major politician confronting the problems that _your_ generation has caused, sir.

While true, from a perspective of 20,000 feet, while it's quasi-open, it's still essentially a proprietary solution, in that you can't share it, can't leverage other eyeballs, other states, other voices... it's better than some, worse than others (you broke it, you own both pieces, despite paying for it and thus getting the code)

I don't see a problem with it, but why single it out and perhaps encourage it?

Yes. This is part of the thinking we need people to understand... the long term.

Always glad to answer these sorts of questions:

1) Enforced socialism? Open Source is voluntary. If you agree to the rules by which the code is shared, you play by those rules. It's got no more 'force' than any other aspect of copyright. (And for the record, I'm anti-copyright, which is a state granted monopoly, and in a truly free society, it wouldn't exist)

2) Get out of the current recession? Ron Paul has the answer: it's monetary policy.
2a) Corporatism? Yes, it's a big problem. I think the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers describe the same problem, different facets. Money in politics is the root of all the evil in both.

3) I'm anti-PatriotAct, anti-TSA, anti-war.
3a) Sadly, not much. Folks like Ron Paul are showing that while 10-15% want to fix things, the rest like the illusions.

4) The religious right needs to grow up and get a life. I believe that they have the right to be left alone, and they need to leave others alone too.
I hadn't heard of the wedge strategy, and frankly, it's a mistake... Government needs to get out of people's live, not tell them what to think or not think.

5) As I said, I'm anti-copyright. Mimi and Eunice FTW.

6) I see myself as a typical slashdotter, in the sense of the old school hacker types... I'm a unix geek with a beard. Usenet and the early net in general was heavily libertarian, and I think a major core sector of libertarians are in the geek industries...

7) biggest disagreement with Liberals: Stay out of my wallet - it's mine.
biggest disagreement with (social) Conservatives: stay out of my bedroom - it's not your business.
How to bring the two sides together? I think the new populism will find a libertarian-ish middle ground bringing Tea Party and Occupy together into a new fusion that respects both wallet and bedroom, ideally more voluntaryist. Or else it'll all fall apart, as the collapse hits us hard here in the US, and in Europe too.

8) I'm a Ron Paul endorser, and I was up on the stage when he announced in NH this past spring in the AP video of the event. I'm the furry muppet in the back.
For all the reasons everyone else does: he's right.

Actually, quite a few bullet item... read the bill... The list of principles that RFP need to factor in, for the better use of government money spent on solutions, is not some random list, but based on solid ideas with reasons behind them. See http://www.opengovdata.org/home/8principles

Folks who contributed to that set of ideas:
Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media), Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation), Micah Sifry (Sunlight Foundation), Adrian Holovaty (EveryBlock), Daniel X. O'Neil (EveryBlock), Michal Migurski (Stamen Design), Shawn Allen (Stamen Design), Josh Tauberer (GovTrack.US), Lawrence Lessig (Stanford), Dan Newman (MapLight.Org), John Geraci (outside.in), Edwin Bender (Inst. for Money), Tom Steinberg (My Society), David Moore (Participatory Politics), Donny Shaw (Participatory Politics), JL Needham (Google), Joel Hardi (Public.Resource.Org), Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman), Greg Palmer (NewCo), Jamie Taylor (MetaWeb), Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo), Zack Exley (New Organizing Institute), Karl Fogel (Question Copyright), Michael Dale (Metavid), Joseph Lorenzo Hall (UC Berkeley), Marcia Hofmann (EFF), David Orban (Metasocial Web), Will Fitzpatrick (Omidyar Network), Aaron Swartz (Open Library)

The problem isn't that there is no method... it's that there is no affordable method (for data they really don't need access to, but are required to keep around by law.) Why spend money and space and so on, on hardware for 'one day, maybe?'

The point of open formats is that worst case, someone has to create a translation into whatever the current format needed is... no hardware or old software dependence....

1) Yes, in fact, I discussed that sort of approach, and it's also been discussed as part of some contentious ongoing battles over power lines...
The 'wiring of NH' is something folks are discussing, and no answers or good plans (IMHO) yet.
The more south you are, and the more urban, of course, the better the situation

2) A recent 2nd Circuit decision and a number of NH decisions have helped a lot. http://www.copblock.org/tag/new-hampshire/
has some news on this. Plus "On the Job, on the Record" bill continues to be worked on in the Legislature.

3) New Hampshire's greatest weakness? Hmm... it's not the "cold" (mild winters and global warming, sweaters and fun stuff to do in winter, all help), and it's not Boston folks (most of the worst voting people live near the educational institutions... not the border of Mass...)
We have low taxes (esp compared to NJ), more relative freedoms (not perfect, but overall best in US already), and lots of tourism...

If I had to name a 'problem', it's that New England tends to be very conservative in taste, meaning that Dunkin Donuts is everywhere, so finding good coffee is hard, Spicy/Ethnic food is findable, but not common place. There is a long tradition, so attempts to restore 'the old NH' can be good (more freedomwise), but things which push against tradition are an uphill battle. While true everywhere, there is a certain reticence in New Hampshire folks (for better or worse). In some ways, this is WHY it's still the best (local politics, town meetings), and in other ways, it's still very hard to make that change happen (local politics, town meetings)

But I wouldn't change it for the world... it's just the other side of the coin...

ALEC is a clearing house of ideas... it's an repository for legislation they think is good. I'm proud that they have embraced legislation _I_ submitted here in (with the help of folks from Institute of Justice, the Kelo case folks) regarding asset forfeiture laws. NH's drafted law was a better model than previous drafts, so it was passed around, and now ALEC has adopted it... meaning that it will end up submitted in other states. That's not a bad thing.

As for the legislation you dislike, let's look at the issues:
1) 'takes away women's rights' = likely abortion related? I'm pro-choice, and wouldn't submit or vote for those, but those who are pro-life, is there a problem with them sharing good 'code' (ie legislation)?
2) privatize prisons... I'm not sure if I like that idea, but I strongly disagree with 'higher cost for fewer services' being a description... it's the opposite: lower costs. Not sure I think the tradeoffs are worthwhile, but some do.
3) 'lower worker's wages'... this could be a pile of bills... Right to Work? (I support it), Lowering the minimum wage laws? (I support that too - minimum wage hurts the fixed income and elderly and youth.)

I've seen ALEC on the official calendar as notices, so I have no idea what you think is being hidden, it's not. And Democrats have rejected working with libertarians, so they can't complain when folks work with the other side of the aisle instead.

Answered in other bits and pieces already...

The key to getting this passed elsewhere is to contact your state officials, and get them working on copying this... State Legislators like copying other states, they prefer not to innovate, just to make tweaks to existing items.

Yes, another excellent example of the potential here. And if other states adopt similar laws, the likelihood goes up of this happening... This is only good for open source developers, especially those in NH.

Jon was aware of the bill(s), but didn't have much to do with it, mostly due to time... but of course, his influence on me and so many others is one of the people at the root of this sort of thing.

GPL should be fine, all flavors.
Will dept wide distribution trigger the need to make those changes public? I think not, it's still internal distribution. I'd hope they will, and used examples like inter-state sharing of code as a benefit and cost saving tool.
How will they share? We have lots of state websites, including DOIT itself (who runs most of the sites anyway), a transparency website, and plenty of other places. I'd hope we end up with a opensource .nh .gov website, where the details and likely downloads (a read only repo?) will be kept, but that's up to the follks who implement, it's not in law.

As for voting machines, NH mandates paper ballots, so we legally CANNOT do electronic voting machines, and yes, I do hope this helps with the existing Diebold ballot scanners, or a suitable replacement someday.

I was kidding of course...
Yeah, 400 Reps means that all of the money is spent on the Senators.

And I wouldn't vote for increasing taxes, even without the AFP pledge, so that's not really a problem for me... I don't see it as a oath, more like letting folks where I stand anyway. Once you get inside this stuff, you realize that the media/partisan spins about ALEC, AFP, and all of the rest are more hype than substance.

actually, my bill did have only buying proprietary with a a requirement for doing the analysis, at first... but I agree with you, and the final version is neutral: all purchases require a TCO report to compare apples to apples.