OSS:Government Policies

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is one of the agencies exploring the policy implication of OSS in the Federal govenment. To develop recommendations, CSIS has tabulated an extensive chart of OSS software policies and legislation considered by national, regional and local government around the world. These policies include

Mandating the use of OSS
Expressing a preference for OSS
Encouraging the use of OSS
Commissioning research into OSS

Motivations for these initiatives include

Displeasure with the US lead in the software industry
Hope that OSS can spur an indigenous software industry
Cost reduction for IT purchases
Encouragement of IT adoption in society

A noteworthy point is that purchasing decisions in the favour of OSS has not been recorded as policies, since they could have been made solely on the basis of price or product. Also note that US is among the 45 countries listed - both DoD and OMB has issued advisories about OSS's usage in the respective departments.

Industrial Lobbying

In response to the various governmental initiatives, companies including notably Microsoft and Autodesk have funded the lobbying group Initiative for Software Choice.

The companies believe that multiple software and hardware model should be allowed to compete on their own merits, without government mandates that automatically prefer one model to another. The group's stated principles urge governments to

Procure software and hardware on their merits, not through categorical preferences
Promote broad availability of government funded research
Promote interoperability through platform-neutral standards
Maintain a choice of strong intellectual property protections