You know, if you're a proprietary software company this sort of news must be really depressing. It just keeps coming. Every day. A new software acquisition and development program is focusing on boosting efficiency and decreasing lifecycle costs for the Air Force through the reuse of applications’ components. The strategy, said Charles Riechers, the Air Force’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisitio You know, if you’re a proprietary software company this sort of news must be really depressing. It just keeps coming. Every day. A new software acquisition and development program is focusing on boosting efficiency and decreasing lifecycle costs for the Air Force through the reuse of applications’ components. The strategy, said Charles Riechers, the Air Force’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, is to “encourage the use of open standards, open data interfaces and best-of-breed open source software solutions.” “We are not mandating either open or proprietary solutions,” Riechers said last week at a luncheon in Vienna, Va., sponsored by the Northern Virginia chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. “But if you’re not using open standards, you have to tell me that and there better be a damn good reason why not. Proprietary technology is okay as long as it based on an informed decision.” A “pretty damn good reason.” I think that’s a great standard to apply to proprietary software purchasing decisions. In some cases, there will be just that – there aren’t viable open source alternatives for a range of different software products. But that list is growing shorter all the time as open source companies and communities keep writing better and better software. Soon, there will be very few “informed decisions” pushing proprietary software. Bank on that. (Thanks to John Scott for the link.) Open Source