There are number of factors coming together that lead me to believe that open source's moment is right now, today, this year.

Not from The 451 Group, unfortunately, but from Sun’s chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy, who told the BBC he has been asked by the new administration to prepare a paper on how the use of open source software within government can improve both security and the cost-effective use of technology.

Red Hat's CEO, in a blog post on Monday, is endorsing the Obama Administration's call for openness and participation in government by likening the President's statement to the open source software movement.

President Obama came to office with the promise of change. His administration has pledged to create an environment of openness and participation. Some have already called him the “open source president” such as consultant and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos. There’s no better time than now. Transparency builds trust. Participation solves problems.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has issued a statement praising President Obama for bringing a culture of inclusion and transparency to the United States government. Whitehurst also takes the opportunity to encourage broader open source adoption.

Recently Glyn Moody and Richard Steel, who is both the president of SocITM (the Society of local government IT Managers) and CIO of the London Borough of Newham, had a minor spat across their respective blogs at ComputerWorld, provoked by Steel's response to to the UK government's newly announced policy for the adoption and promotion of open source - Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use: Gover

Much noise has been made in the past week or so about President-elect Barack Obama's creation of a governmental chief tech officer position. My question is: What will be their stance on open source? Will they lean towards it, mandate it, forbid it ... or ignore it entirely? I looked into it, and came away feeling we had much bigger problems looming.

Before he's even sworn in, Barack Obama enters office with the tag, "open source president," thanks to a CNN commentator. Can he bring more citizen involvement to government? His transition team already is laying the groundwork, and other projects are trying to do the same

A group of prominent open source software vendors have written an open letter to the Obama administration encouraging broader adoption of open source software.