The U.S. military is no laggard when it comes to open-source software adoption, but apparently thinks it can do better. The U.S. Department of Defense on Tuesday issued new guidelines designed to remove roadblocks to open-source adoption, arguing that open source can help the Defense Department "anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements."

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.

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

Many things have rings: mobile phones have incredibly annoying ones, jewelers have incredibly expensive ones, and Hell — at least according to Dante — has incredibly detailed ones. For the past three years, thanks to a government contractor called Coverity, Open Source has rung as well.

A veteran of Australia's open source industry says that unless government agencies make a fundamental decision to change technologies and then plan their move, the status quo will remain.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has revealed its latest flight simulator runs on Suse Linux-based clusters of Opteron servers and uses an open source graphics platform.

Tomorrow, the Department of Health and Human Services will host its first "code-a-thon" dedicated to the National Health Information Network and its Connect software

According to O'Reilly, the entity Gov 2.0 has several features. It emphasizes transparency of social networks and allows citizen contribution and collaboration. It treats government as a platform and a means of collective action, but it's about Benjamin Franklin's concept of citizen action, not what Donald Kent called "vending machine government."