free software in government

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) started promoting the idea of sharing code way back in 1985, and since then it's defended the rights of computer users and developers. The FSF says that the terms "open" and "closed" are not effective words when classifying software, and instead considers programs either freedom-respecting ("free" or "libre") or freedom-trampling ("non-free" or "proprietary"). Whatever terminology you use, the imperative is that computers must belong, part and parcel, to the users, and not to the corporations that owns the software the computers run. This is why the GNU Project, and the Linux kernel, Freedesktop.org, and so many other open source projects are so important.