A New Voice for Open Source in Government

“The new organization is called Open Source for America (OSA),
and you can find its Web site here. Tim O’Reilly will officially
announce OAS at OSCON later today, and you can find the launch
press release here, as well as pasted in at the end of this blog
post for archival purposes. I’m sure that you’ll also see quite a
few articles blossom across the Web today relating to its
announcement, but having been in on the planning, here’s what it’s
all about.

“The immediate goal of the organization will be to raise
awareness about free and open source software in government. Or, as
stated in the lede to the press release, to provide, “a unified
voice for the promotion of open source software in the U.S. Federal
Government arena.” The full version of the OAS mission can be found
in the Charter document, and reads as follow:

“The mission of OSA is to educate decision makers in the U.S.
Federal government about the advantages of using free and open
source software; to encourage the Federal agencies to give equal
priority to procuring free and open source software in all of their
procurement decisions; and generally provide an effective voice to
the U.S. Federal government on behalf of the open source software
community, private industry, academia, and other non-profits.”

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