OMB Shared First Should Include Open Source, Says Group

Open source advocates urge the Office of Management and Budget to expand its Shared First strategy to include open source software development in a Feb. 2 comment posted online.

OMB released Dec. 8 a draft strategy calling on agencies to develop a plan to shift at minimum two commodity IT areas "to a shared environment" by Dec. 31, 2012. The agency says it will have a final strategy developed by April to guide agencies toward the common utilization of commodity and support IT at the intra- and inter- agency level, "culminating with improvement in mission IT."

"There is no explicit mention of open source in the plan at this time, we believe that there should be," says the comment form Open Source For America, a group consisting of open source companies and supporters promoting open source adoption within the federal government...