Some of the best software available is open source, but non-proprietary software has enemies as well as friends. Not surprisingly, then there's been plenty of fog on Capitol Hill about free and open source software (FOSS) for a decade now.

Massachusetts recently passed a sweeping new data security law that will have a profound impact on the way the United States, and perhaps the rest of the world, manages and develops data-centric applications. Oddly, most people in the business don't seem to know about it.

"Summary: Amendments to the Universal Service directive pushed by American Telco AT&T currently allow operators to implement anti-Net neutrality measures. These provisions: ..."

The European Union's top Internet official took aim at Microsoft Corp. on Thursday, warning that governments can accidentally lock themselves into one company's software for decades by setting it as a standard for their technology systems.

«Civil liberties groups La Quadrature du Net, European Digital Rights (EDRi), AK Vorrat, and Netzpolitik.org are urging the European Parliament to heed advice given by the European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx and scrap plans dubbed "voluntary data retention"...»

When a Public Administration uses it to reform the way it works, to solve the problem it actually has instead of those authors of proprietary software _think_ it has

Unverifiable paperless voting systems are still considered normal in many states; The software that counts our votes is secret proprietary property of Diebold, Sequoia, et al; The system is unnecessarily difficult to use (or impossible to use) for citizens with disabilities; Election judges still strain to divine voter intent on a significant percentage of ballots

Why Linux? Well, the answer to this question was given in detail by PK Mishra, Senior Consulting Architect, Novell India in his presentation titled ‘Linux for eGovernance solution.’ In this session, he explained where and how Linux can be used and how it is absolutely ready for government as well as enterprises. According to him, cost, choice, security and reliability along with standards, peer review, freedom, flexibility, no lock in, TCO, reuse, and ROI are some of the significant advantages of using Linux.