While the Internet may know no borders, the U.S Government does. There are a number of rules including encryption export regulations from the U.S Department of Commerce and export sanctions by the Department of Treasury that affect software vendors. But what do you do when your application is open source and freely available to anyone in the world? Do the same the rules apply?

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

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 Australian Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist. Please sign the petition below...

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

Global Internet bodies are incensed by a United Nations review of Internet governance that will be conducted solely by government representatives. They are urging people to sign a petition calling for a more widely representative review

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.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's censorship policy won him the Internet Villain of the Year trophy, awarded by the British internet industry.

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.