You can read about the We the People project to make the petition process accessible right on the White House web site, and sign our petition.  You can read a fuller version of Why FTC here on our site.

How does it work? We have thirty days to gather 25,000 signatures. Once that threshold is reached, the administration will review our petition and provide a response.

If you happen to be attending OSCON in Portland, Oregon this week, then come hear us talk about Free the Code on Thursday at 2:30pm.

Okay that’s pretty broad, so let’s put a finer point on the idea.  We think if the government pays for  software  – that’s either through its employes or paying contractors to develop new software – we think that should be made available for reuse and sharing.  Could benefit other government agencies.  Start-ups that could innovate upon.  Non-Profits.  Universities.  And others we won’t think of now, but someone else will.  But we do think releasing publicly-funded, custom software as open source is an idea whose time has come.

Our bright idea is not entirely new, In fact, some federal agencies are already doing this, but it hasn’t had much public discussion.  That’s what FTC is about today; start the discussion,  get people from different domains involved (beyond techies), refine the idea, and see what we can get done together.

We’re just getting started.  But we hope you’ll stay tuned and participate as we begin a national conversation on the future of software in government.