I think I'm going to disagree with the sentiment of the article and say that congress should not be investing in opensource generically any more than they shoul

I think I'm going to disagree with the sentiment of the article and say that congress should not be investing in opensource generically any more than they should be building cars, computers, or whatever other shared technologies we all use (except maybe to boost some really fundamental research, AKA Sematech). But that isn't to say, that congress shouldn't be allocating budget to open source projects where it makes sense. Another poster pointed out the education software market, which is a good example of a case where the government is basically creating a whole industry that exists primary to service a government need. In that case there should be a strong bias to libre licensed software, even going so far as to create it if needed. Blanket statements though, about all software the government uses should be free is crazy. Why can't the government actually do cost/benefit analysis and make that determination on a case by case basis and pick the tool for the job. It would be crazy to say that they should write their own internet search engine, or niche software for the two guys in the government that use $commercial_off_the_shelf_package that only runs on windows. So, why not identify a few places that need change and fix those rather than these all encompassing statements. Tax filing software is another area where anyone who isn't h&r block or Intuit thinks the government should actually spend a few million and write some software, or for that matter voting software. PS, in case it wasn't clear, if the government writes some software is should absolutely be opensource with a liberal license.