We know your company uses open-source applications. We also know many of you already have an open-source policy. Sort of. As CIO.com discovered when researching the adoption of open-source in enterprise IT, a quarter of respondents have a formal policy in place to control how such software is chosen, supported and deployed. Another 18 percent expected to adopt such a policy in the next 12 months.

The Icelandic government has released a policy on free and open source software. In short, the policy states that when buying software free and open source software should be considered on an equal footing with proprietary software, that software based on open standards shall be chosen, that lock-ins to specific vendors should be avoided (choosing free software is one means to achieve this), that bespoke or customized software shall be reusable (and free and open source software achieves this), and finally that students of Icelandic educational institutes shall have the opportunity to learn about and use free and open source software on a par with proprietary software.

This policy applies to all state institutions and organizations operated with public funds.

The UK government has rejigged its open source and open standards software procurement policy, following pressure from OSS vendors last autumn. Early last year the Cabinet Office revised its rules on public sector open source software purchases, but many OSS players complained that the policy amendments didn’t go far enough.

The New Zealand Ministry for Justice believes that open source software is a more stable, supportable, and cost-effective choice compared to proprietary solutions.

It's fascinating to see governments around the world embrace open source as a way to boost local economies and improve sovereignty. It's even better when the policy process itself is laid bare, allowing outsiders to see the partisan meddling that goes into a publicly articulated policy.

Vermont has become the latest government to enact an open source software policy, after Secretary of Administration Neale F. Lunderville recently signed a policy developed under state CIO David Tucker's leadership.

The policy requirements for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution include the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system, as well as technical requirements that each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution.

On March 29 & 30, NASA will host its first Open Source Summit at Ames Research Center in Mountain View California.

One of the timeless challenges of open-source development is keeping software as up-to-date as possible while also maximizing stability.  With this difficulty in mind, Ubuntu's developers recently discussed the operating system's policy on updates.  Here's the story, with some thoughts.