[infrastructure] [FINAL] Letter to Founders

[Gunnar Hellekson]

Friends --

Now that the letter to the board has been sent, we're planning to send
this tomorrow morning to the founders, from the "working-groups@" email 
address.

Infrastructure, please review to ensure we have everything in
place. Working Group, please ensure that we're on-message with the call
to action, tone, etc.

Thanks!

g

# # #

Friends and Founders --

Like you, we're thrilled that the free and open source software
movement can now speak to US government with a unified voice. It's
gratifying to see the principles of the free and open source software
movement embraced by such a broad constituency. The announcement on
July 22 was well received. At the site, you can see the overwhelmingly
positive media coverage following our official launch at OSCON 2009:

   http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/news-and-events/coverage

Membership is now well over 1000 individuals!

But we can't rest on our launch laurels. As this organization's founders,
we have work to do.

The first step is to organize this new community. As some of you
already know, we'll be setting up working groups for specific policy
areas where free and open source software can help.

In some cases, these working groups align with the Obama
Administration's priorities. In other cases, we have already
identified strong advocates for a particular issue. We'll no doubt be
adding and changing groups based on their performance and support over
time. At the moment, we've recognized the following areas:

1. Healthcare
2. Energy and Transportation
3. Education
4. Military
5. Acquisitions & Competition
6. State and Local
7. Cybersecurity
8. Transparency
9. Voting and Elections Technology
10. Geospatial Technology

Wherever possible, these groups should reach out to organizations that
are already working in these spaces and are sympathetic to our cause.
The intent is to leverage the work of others, not to create
unnecessary or redundant organizations.

Please respond to this email and let us know if you or your
organization is interested in a committee or chairmanship on any of
these working groups. Be sure to include the contact information for
those who will be participating.

Once we have committees assembled for each working group, we'll be
reaching out to the members and asking them to sign up for the working
group mailing lists. From there, it's up to the working group
committees to cultivate their particular policy area. The Steering
Committee will provide guidance on specific deliverables and
expectations.

There's never been a US Administration so sympathetic to free and open
source software. There's never been so many citizens with the same
enthusiasm for the open source process. This is an unprecedented
opportunity to profoundly change the way our government uses and
understands software. We can fundamentally change how this country
works.

Let's get started.

Kind Regards,

Open Source for America Steering Committee
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