Open Source Community Gathers For Red Hat Government Symposium

Open source continues to be used in new and innovative ways as federal agencies become more comfortable with the software development philosophy that helps solve common problems with common solutions, said Red Hat Vice President and General Manager of U.S. Public Sector Paul Smith.

Smith’s comments came Tuesday as a kickoff to the Red Hat Government Symposium, produced by FedScoop, at the Newseum where more than 600 attendees convened to discuss lessons learned from implementing open source solutions in an event that featured nearly 40 speakers and panelists.

“If there’s one lesson that has become clear, it’s that mission-critical IT demands at all levels of the government require freedom and choice,” Smith said. “The high costs, high risk and elusive returns of proprietary software just don’t make sense for the government’s biggest IT challenges.”