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

[Andy Oram]

I've been exchanging email separately with another member of this
list, Justin Seiferth, and I like a big reformulation he made of my
suggested project 4:

"To encourage the Government to examine all alternatives- commercial,
in-house, existing open source, from domestic and foreign so long as
they are open-source to fulfill its requirements."

Justin, along with some other people I've talked to at other times,
points out that we shouldn't discourage private companies and other
organizations from offering services.

My concern in project 4 is to make sure government gets what it
needs. Many commercial services have terms of service or privacy
policies that aren't appropriate for government use. But the
government doesn't have to re-invent the services; it's capable of
negotiating changes.

Andy