Five Projects for Open Source for America, and Other Reports From the Open Source Convention

A group of companies, advocacy groups, and open source projects announced Open Source for America at the O'Reilly Open Source convention on Wednesday. Trying to draw as many collaborators as possible into their coalition, they aim to establish a more effective voice supporting the use of free and open source software in the U.S. Federal government environment.

Their three overarching goals include two for the government itself--changing its policies and raising awareness--plus one that could help educate and change the organizations that want to inject open source software and practices into government machinery.

The creators and advisors I talked to said they had fashioned a broad opening announcement without trying to raise specific proposals or discuss highly technical issues. In fact, they are still working out issues of governance, with the hope of ensuring the organization reflects grass-roots concerns.

Therefore, the work of fashioning an agenda for the organization is just starting. In that spirit I propose five projects[...]