A group of software vendors has published an open letter to president Obama encouraging the new administration to adopt open source software in the government's IT infrastructure. The letter says that open source software can reduce costs when implementing government technology initiatives in areas like healthcare and security.

Open source software is already broadly used by many different branches of the government. The Department of Defense, which has been exploring the benefits of open source software for years, has used Linux and open source technology in a wide range of key projects, including the Army Future Combat Systems program and the Land Warrior program. The DoD also recently launched a Web site on which it hosts its open source projects.

The Obama administration has expressed interest in evaluating the potential benefits of broader open source adoption in government IT, but it's unclear if its current approach will be able to produce sound policy guidance. The open letter, published Tuesday by a group of open source vendors, could help to impress upon the new president the potential benefits of formulating a strong strategy for open source adoption.

"Mr. President, we believe the open-source industry is changing the world of software development in many of the ways you have promised to change American politics," the letter declares. "The values of open-source mirror those you promoted in your campaign: hope, change, and openness. We, the undersigned, sincerely hope that you will make the use of open-source software a key component of every new technology initiative the United States government enters into during your presidency."

The fact that the letter has been authored by commercial open source software vendors, however, makes it seem a bit more like an advertisement than a sincere attempt to guide open source policy. The letter specifically promotes TriSano, "an open source, citizen-focused surveillance and outbreak management system for infectious disease, environmental hazards, and bioterrorism attacks."

The Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI), the vendor behind TriSano, is likely responsible for orchestrating the open letter. The letter's first two signatories are a CSI developer and CSI CEO Stuart Cohen.

Cohen used to be the CEO of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) but departed the organization and founded CSI after OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group. Cohen recently generated some controversy with an article he wrote for BusinessWeek in which he argued that the service-oriented business model behind many open source software companies is fundamentally broken.

Cohen and some of the other like-minded signatories on the open letter are not conventional open source advocates. They are entrepreneurs who appreciate the cost efficacy of collaborative development. Their position, as enunciated in the letter, is that the government should give careful consideration to the benefits of source code availability and collaborative development during the procurement process.

"I believe that community sourcing—an application development model that adapts open source methodologies—should always be considered because it results in lower cost development and deployments, higher quality code and the transparency in enterprise applications that we've all come to expect," Cohen told us in an e-mail.

Indeed, the ability to broadly reuse and repurpose open code could make an open development model extremely advantageous for the government. Open technologies could also boost interoperability and give government agencies more flexibility in data interchange and other critical areas.

To demonstrate the extent of public support for open source adoption, the corporate executives who have signed the open letter are asking for concerned citizens and members of the open source software community to join them in affirming support for the letter's contents. To facilitate this, they have launched a public Web site where visitors can add their names to the letter.