Steps to adopting F/OSS in government

This talk looks at both successful and unsuccessful attempts to adopt open source software (the term is preferred to "free software" in government) and lays out some principles for people inside and outside government agencies to promotes its use. In particular, I will discuss the assessment of costs and benefits done for the city of Munich in Germany, the creation of Forge.mil by the Department of Defense, and the process used to choose OpenOffice.org for the state of Massachusetts (a project that was defunded). The importance of using explicitly political arguments for the adoption of open source software, and for agency managers to understand the community and workings of open source at a deep level, will be stressed.