Change.org (not the same as Change.gov) provides a feature where site members can suggest ideas they’d like to see adopted by the United States Government.

One suggestion currently getting attention on the site is to Support the Free Software Movement.

While this idea itself is highly open to interpretation, a site member offers more concrete suggestions for what it could mean in policy terms. Some of commenter John Zoidberg’s ideas include:

– No more software patents
– Financing and encouragement of Free Software development
– Make source code developed by public research organizations available under an OSI License/public domain/GPL
– Make all public services, government administrations use open document formats
– Make all public services, government administrations use Free Software (servers+desktop)
-Make software source code become GPL or public domain after X years

Government expenses could be trimmed by using more open source, while private sector innovation would also be increased due to competition around the best implementations of open standards. It’s a great way for the government to advance its technology innovation platform.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Free Culture, ODF, Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.