[acquisitions-wg] Five large projects for Open Source for America

[Andy Oram]

The day Open Source for America was announced, I published a list of
five ambitious projects I thought it should take on:

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/07/five-projects-for-open-source.html

The list of projects follows. I wonder whether other people on this
list think they're worthy, and whether they're an appropriate discussion
topic for this list (or perhaps other OSA lists).

1. To encourage all information to be stored in truly open formats.
The touchstone of success is whether all the data stored can be
retrieved by alternative means.

2. To instill government procedures that are friendly to projects that
don't have well-organized corporate backers who can register with the
government, and meet standards for liability, etc.

3. To train companies as well as independent projects on how to go
through the steps required to be adopted by governments.

4. To encourage the government to develop its own Software as a
Service offerings, requiring vendors to use an appropriate free
software license, rather than depend on commercial services that were
developed for other markets.

5. To join efforts at defining a maturity model for open source
software, so governments can evaluate its quality, reliability, and
security.

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Andy Oram  O'Reilly Media                     email: andyo at oreilly.com
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