An Open Question

For years, it was a back-office passion for a select few. But government interest in open source software (OSS) took a decidedly large leap forward in 2004 when the city of Munich, Germany, announced it was switching 14,000 desktops to the Linux operating system. Soon after in the United States, the public sector was startled to hear that Massachusetts adopted a new policy requiring state agencies to pursue open standards options (originally open source) for new applications.