Another call for the public sector to get involved in open source associations

Simon Phipps, director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), has joined the calls for public sector organisations using open source software to get involved in open source associations (news passim).

Speaking at the recent World Open Source Conference, Phipps is reported to have said: “It is nice to have a policy, but if you don’t join the community, you don’t have a vote.”

Phipps argues that in order to gain influence on the development of open source software, public sector organisations should maintain close ties with the relevant communities. Joining all groups that work on specific tools used by the public sector organisation itself may be too much, but they could at least join well-connected associations such as OSI.

The OSI director recommends that public sector bodies using either OpenOffice or LibreOffice or one of the other free and open source office suites should at least join the groups involved in developing them, warning that: “Otherwise, the software will not progress.”

Wise words indeed.