Open Source in America

Linux in Government: An Interview with John Weathersby of OSSI
—Linux Journal, July 9, 2004
On July 1, 2004, the Executive Office of the President of the United States issued a memorandum for Senior Procurement Executives and Chief Information Officers. The memorandum emphasizes the President's previous memorandum titled "Maximizing Use of SmartBuy and Avoiding Duplication of Agency Activities". In this latest memorandum, OMB 04-16, the President issued the following ground-breaking statements:

This reminder applies to acquisitions of all software, whether it is proprietary or Open Source Software. Open Source Software's source code is widely available so it may be used, copied, modified, and redistributed. It is licensed with certain common restrictions, which generally differ from proprietary software. Frequently, the licenses require users who distribute Open Source Software, whether in its original form or as modified, to make the source code widely available. Subsequent licenses usually include the terms of the original license, thereby requiring wide availability. These differences in licensing may affect the use, the security, and the total cost of ownership of the software and must be considered when an agency is planning a software acquisition.

U.S. government seeks the open road
—InfoWorld, March 12, 2004
Open source software is driving the next wave of federal, state, and local government IT projects.

Linux in Government: Winning in the Big Enterprise Space
—Linux Journal, June 21, 2004
Tom Adelstein writes in Linux Journal that, technically, one-third of the US Government has moved to Linux: its Third Branch, the Judiciary. That's 30,000 users across 800 locations, comprising the nation's Federal court system.

Defense department endorses open-source software
—SearchEnterpriseLinux, June 12, 2003
Enterprises looking toward the federal government for technological inspiration got a healthy dose of it recently when the Department of Defense authorized the use of open-source software within its ranks.

Road to Open Source
—eWeek, January 6, 2003
Rhode Island put itself on the cutting edge of hot-technology uptake (in 2002) when it became one of the first state governments to get beyond traditional government conservatism and implement open-source technology. The gamble is paying off: The bill for the state's rules and regulations database came in at $40,000 — only $6,000 of which was hardware costs — and took one consultant four months working only two days a week to complete.

Massachusetts Builds Open-Source Public Trough
—Information Week, Mar 22, 2004
Massachusetts took the wraps off a new software repository designed to let government agencies make more efficient use of open-source software. The repository will be managed by the Government Open Code Collaborative, a newly formed group of seven states and four municipalities that will contribute and download open-source software and proprietary software designed by government agencies for their use.

Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part I
—Linux Journal, June 10, 2003
Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part II
—Linux Journal, June 19, 2003
Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part III
—Linux Journal, June 30, 2003
The main thing a government unit considering open-source software wants to know is how it can save money. The people who answer to their constituents need to show cost cutting and a balanced budget.