Government Open Source Adoption

This cluster discusses governments' use, development, funding, and mandating of open source software, including arguments for requiring FOSS in public projects, taxpayer benefits, and replacing proprietary alternatives.

➡️ Stable 0.7x Open Source
2,935
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#8053
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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2009
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2010
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2011
38
2012
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2013
143
2014
107
2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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2023
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2026
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Keywords

MS IT US MUST e.g FOSS OSS NDA TurboTax ITI open source government source open source software open source software software governments taxpayers foss

Sample Comments

xiwenc Dec 3, 2023 View on HN

Really cool! Wish more government funded organizations publish open source software.

anigbrowl Feb 12, 2023 View on HN

Don't expect government to go open source. Use open source to supersede government functionality.

madez Jan 4, 2018 View on HN

Because governments don't back FOSS like they should.

mrwyz Jul 25, 2024 View on HN

Excellent, good for them! I don't understand why other governments don't follow suit, or why people are opposed to it. There might be some valid cons about requiring the use of FOSS (e.g. LibreOffice vs MS Office), but the part about requiring government sponsored code to be released as open source is clearly good for governments. Having the code freely open is good leverage against greed and good insurance for vendor failures.

rapind May 16, 2017 View on HN

Call me crazy, but I don't think any government should be running closed source software for anything where there exists an open source alternative.

redanddead Sep 25, 2022 View on HN

Would it be possible that the US government create its own open source software? has that been done before?

sMarsIntruder Mar 16, 2025 View on HN

Guys, pls say that government-funded open source projects are fine, otherwise prepare to get downvoted just because it is.

taylodl Aug 17, 2023 View on HN

Serious question - can governments put mandates on open source software? How would that work? How could it work?

suyash Feb 21, 2025 View on HN

More of a reason to stay away from that, think about it why does Gov run open source website, answer : so they can control what software is made and what it can do on the free web.

ComradePhil Mar 22, 2022 View on HN

No government should buy closed source anything for obvious reasons.