LA city councilman says open source = more cops

Los Angeles city councilman Eric Garcetti is proposing that the city convert to open source software, and divert the anticipated savings into hiring more police. That's a sore spot for the city -- the cop-to-citizen ratio in LA is thinner than an anorexic actress. Garcetti believes the move could save the city millions, and fund a long-overdue hiring expansion for the LAPD.

I'll be reporting on this for tomorrow's edition of the NPR radio show "Day to Day." Here's a snip from Garcetti's announcement:

The motion asks the Information Technology Agency to report on how the city could forgo paying for proprietary software licenses and instead transition to open source platforms and programs. "Open source" means that any programmer can see the software code and propose changes; a community of users creates, supports, and freely distributes applications. Some users pay a fee for technical support, but free support is available on internet message boards. The city spent $5.8 million on proprietary software licenses in FY2003-4.

"For taxpayers, this is a no-brainer," said Councilmember Eric Garcetti, member of the Information Technology and General Services committee. "By engaging this online community, we can make our own communities safer. Free open source software can be as capable and more secure than products that cost the city millions."

(...) The city already uses some open-source applications to run network servers. Widely used programs include OpenOffice.org, a desktop suite including a word processor and spreadsheet, and Linux, an operating system. It is not expected that all proprietary software will be replaced by open source; some is custom-made directly for the city and cannot be replaced. The motion recommends that savings from open source transitioning be placed in the Special Fund for Efficiency Projects and Police Hiring.

Link to councilman Garcetti's website. Related documents: motion (9K PDF) and press release (28K PDF). See also this related post on blogging.la, which hails the announcement as "a totally bad ass move": Link.