Pushing the Government Toward Open Source

A new not-for-profit lobbying group, Open Source for America (OSFA), is knocking on United States federal agency doors and reminding purchasers that there are often open-source alternatives available to satisfy government software needs.

William Vass, member of the board of advisors at OSFA, said the group's goal is "to get open source into the procurement process. [Open source] is doing well in the intelligence community and in the Department of Defense, but the rest of the government is schizophrenic in its use of open source.”

The OSFA was founded in the summer of 2008 by such technology luminaries as Roger Burkhardt, CEO of Ingres; chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center Eben Moglen; and director of the Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin.

Vass, formerly a member of Sun Microsystems' Washington D.C. team, is now acting as an ambassador for open source inside the Beltway. Rishab Ghosh, another member of the advisory board for OSFA, is also spending his off-hours away from his Twitter search engine startup, Topsy, reminding government officials that there are alternatives.