Companies, Academics Form Coalition to Promote Open-Source Software

Leaders of the open-source movement announced on Wednesday that they have formed a coalition to promote support of and adoption by federal agencies of the nonproprietary computer software.

More than 50 companies, academic institutions, communities and individuals formed Open Source for America to promote its use in the federal government. Open source generally refers to software code that is provided to the public to modify and download for free.

Its supporters argue the method lowers the cost of software development and can provide better applications because an unlimited number of programmers are free to improve the underlying code.