The free and open source software community has witnessed, over and over again, how far a visit to the right government officials can go. Bill Gates seems to know the game, and what cards he should play in every occasion to “make things happen”.

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.

A government committee recommends a change in German law to enable public administrations to make their software available as free and open source. The current law prohibits governments from being part of the development process in the free software community.

As laws are reformed, Microsoft is misusing the "open source" buzz (formerly Free software) to take over government contracts

Our panel focused on barriers to its adoption and steps that free software advocates could take to reach out to government agencies.

It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.

Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.

With a mighty "yehhh," the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a motion to adopt open standards in its local government this past May. It allows governments to free themselves of pricy, proprietary software burdens while simultaneously opening up more areas of government for access by conventional citizens.

If the government uses open source software, then the government is at risk because the security flaws are exposed publicly. The use of proprietary software protects the government from security attacks because its code is hidden and not released to the public.

The U.S. federal government is being taken advantage of by many unscrupulous software vendors who charge the government far more for proprietary software, and technical support for that software, than is warranted.