The economic stimulus bill to be signed on 17 Feb here in Denver, has an interesting section directing the Secretary of Health and Human services to study the availability of open source health technology systems and to compare the total cost of ownership against proprietary systems.  The report is due no later than Oct 2010 and, depending on the results, could provide great momentum for open source medical software.  Proprietary software often costs many thousands of dollars just for the software, once you add on the installation and support fees you can easily arrive at a total cost which overwhelms many small doctors offices.  Read the exact wording from the bill here (please look at p 553 in the pdf document).

CNET reported that the Defense Department has established an online file repository to encourage the development of open source applications for use within the department.  The reason? "The Defense Department sees open source as a way to cut costs and boost security, and it wants more of it."  Cutting costs and boosting security are two powerful reason why small businesses should also consider the use of open source software.  Read the full article here.

The internet has created an ecomonic model based on giving things away for free. The Wall Street Journal expects this trend to increase given the current economic conditions.  The article predicts that, "the shift toward open source software (which is free) and Web-based productivity tools such as Google Docs (also free) to accelerate."  Many small business are able to gain the greatest by using these technologies to give them a competitive advantage against companies who are still paying licenses for all their software.  Read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

The New York times is reporting that open source initiatives and software-as-services (aka cloud computing) are forcing large technology players like Microsoft to rethink their business models.  Many new small and medium sized companies are choosing to use open source programs or software-as-services in order to cut the cost of their technology budgets.  Read the full article here.