Are we alone?

The government of any country is probably that state's largest single organization. It's tough to keep in contact with other people in the government and really difficult to find out about others who are using or considering open source products or development methods. Based on the number of emails I get on this topic I thought it would be worthwhile to start collecting references to ongoing projects- hence this page. If you see a worthwhile link or are working on a project yourself- please let me know. I'd be glad to add a link here.

Government Policy

  • News Flash! The German Foreign Office and Bundeswehr (Department of Defense) has banned the use of Microsoft software according to this article in the standard. You can also read the thread on Slashdot which the article generated. If you have any doubt they mean what they say, please note that the Official Bundeswehr site is running- you guessed it - Linux and Apache.
  • Linuxtoday recently ran a two part essay on the Korean Government's leanings toward open source and the Linux operating system in particular.
  • The French Government has considered mandating the use of open source.

    • Open Source Contracts

    The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has contracted for a $15M Linux - based supercomputer to help forecast US weather. NOAA's HPCC is very active in the area of supercomputing so perhaps this is the beginning of a trend. It's great that NOAA is open to using Linux as an operating system, perhaps next they may release portions or all of the applications which will run on the machine.

    Open Source Research Projects

    DARPA and the NSF have decided to allow CMU to release the Sphinx speech recognition software as open source. I hope other research projects also decide to follow suit.

    Success Stories

    Have you checked out the Official USAF (United States Air Force) site? Do so- it's cool and it's running on Linux.

    A small town in Texas writes about their successful foray with open source. The smaller your organization, the more open source may have to offer!

    Last update: 04 Jan 00 by Justin Seiferth