It was bound to happen. Open source is rapidly advancing in government use worldwide. And now it's making a big play in the US federal government, as noted in this article from FCW. In part, the success of open source in the federal government has come because of the "de-risking" of it through the support of big-name vendors:Open-source systems may be gaining credibility in government circles because they are in It was bound to happen. Open source is rapidly advancing in government use worldwide. And now it’s making a big play in the US federal government, as noted in this article from FCW. In part, the success of open source in the federal government has come because of the “de-risking” of it through the support of big-name vendors:Open-source systems may be gaining credibility in government circles because they are increasingly associated with large, well-respected suppliers such as IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems and Unisys. “When we see big-name vendors and large systems integrators offering and supporting open systems when historically they made their money from proprietary systems, we have to take notice,” said Charles Riechers, principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force. “They wouldn’t be moving in that direction if open source didn’t make sense for their businesses, and therefore it makes sense for us.” It’s hard to overstate the clout those large vendors and system integrators have with government information technology managers who rely on them to design and implement major projects, said Peter Gallagher, president of Development InfoStructure, which develops open-source applications for the federal government.Point well taken, and I’ll gladly give IBM et al credit for making it easier to sell to the federal government. But we managed to sell to several of the most security conscious of agencies, and without a big brother shepherding us in. We’re not alone in this, either. We’ve come a long way from the early days of open source. I remember speaking with the CIO of the US Senate back in my Novell days. For him, it was Windows or nothing – there was safety in Redmond’s platinum IT handcuffs. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was locking legislative records for 260 million-plus US citizens in a vendor’s proprietary format. Now, the Department of Transportation, the US Navy, and others are skittish about installing Microsoft’s Vista. Free at last. Open Source