U.S. Administration's 'Technology Neutrality' Announcement Welcome News

No readers like this yet.
Open source in use here

Opensource.com

Score another landmark for the mainstreaming of open source. 

On January 7, the Administration issued a succinct, clear message to Executive Branch IT leaders: Don't discriminate between proprietary and open source solutions when it currently spends almost $80 billion dollars to buy information

technology (IT). In fact, in its message on Technology Neutrality, it goes even further, urging agencies to “analyze alternatives that include proprietary, open source, and mixed source technologies. This allows the Government to pursue the best strategy to meet its particular needs. ”

The directive emphasizes, among other things, several, key open source factors such as interoperability and re-use in selection of IT.

At one level, this recent announcement is a refreshing reiteration of prior US government direction to agencies. In 2004, OMB made clear that open source was commercial software. Two years, ago, the Department of Defense published clarifying guidance that sought to dispel much of the 'FUD' (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) around open source.

But, this most recent announcement takes an important step: Signed by three leading Administration officials responsible for federal procurement, IT reform, and protection of Intellectual Property, the message firmly anchors open source solutions into the mainstream of federal government procurement options. The Administration is to be commended for its continued work to ensure a level playing field, working to ensure technology and vendor neutrality in acquisitions for IT, and emphasizing procurement choices based on performance and value, free of preconceived preferences based on how the technology is developed, licensed or distributed.  

Tags
User profile image.
Mark Bohannon | Mark Bohannon is Vice President of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs at Red Hat. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Public Policy and General Counsel at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal U.S. trade association for the software and digital content industry.

2 Comments

<cite>Signed by three leading Administration officials responsible for federal procurement, IT reform, and protection of Intellectual Property, the message firmly anchors open source solutions into the mainstream of federal government procurement options. </cite>

Gotta love it. Too often we only hear about what Gov't does not do right, only what is perceived to be wrong.

Looks like they got this one right!

With the recent movement to cut spending, maybe this could be a good first step toward cutting spending through using open source instead of proprietary software in government computers (and I don't just mean servers, workstations, and what not). Maybe I'm being a little too hopeful, though.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.