Bureaucratic fears and self interest preventing use of open source in U.S. government

Here are some excerpts from an excellent article in FierceGovernmentIT on the topic of open source acceptance in government.

A host of impediments--many having to do with the nature of program funding--prevent wider adoption of open source software within the federal government, said David Wheeler, a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses and an open source proponent.Government officials interviewed by the pair voiced a fear of change...

Program offices want to ensure they spend their entire budget and don't want their head counts diminished.

Contractors, meanwhile, likewise don't want their personnel ranks diminished and view sharing software code as directly undermining their ability to receive additional government business.

Government policies laying out open source's acceptability within agencies get turned around by opponents as a weapon against it, Wheeler added.