OSCON 2009: Governments and open source

“Solutions to these barriers to entry involve both new ideas and
old-fashioned legwork. OSI’s Michael Tiemann observed that
government’s distinctive buying habits permit open source some
additional advantages over proprietary software, for those who are
looking for them. He cited the example of product retirement:
government agencies are often restricted in how and when they can
dispose of old technology (for security and budgetary reasons). In
contrast, open source products that are deemed failed experiments
or simply no longer needed can be disposed of easily. Hellekson
concurred, noting that the US Department of Defense has recently
acknowledged that breaking projects into smaller, modular chunks is
more successful than the traditional large contracts.

“As O’Reilly pointed out in his keynote, though, getting open
source products considered during the bidding process for most
government contracts is primarily a challenge of persistence. There
are many people with the skills to navigate the procurement
processes, he said, but considering the specialization required,
few are able or willing to make selling to a single customer (such
as a national government) their entire career.”

Complete Story