[IAEP] Fwd: [OSA-Announce] UPDATE: Welcome to Open Source for America!

[Kevin Cole]

I know it's a bit US-centric for some, but it looks like Tim
O'Reilly's latest gig has made some progress.  I signed on early, and
then thought my subscription got lost in the e-mail. ;-)  Given that
some of you have partied with senators and other congressional wonks,
I figured you'd like to know..

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: General announcement list (low traffic)
<osa-announce at opensourceforamerica.org>
Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 12:18
Subj: [OSA-Announce] UPDATE: Welcome to Open Source for America!
To:   osa-announce at opensourceforamerica.org

Welcome to Open Source for America!

You are receiving this email, because you've joined Open Source for
America (OSFA) since our initial launch on July 22. We apologize about
the delay in communicating but the team has been busy building out and
testing the infrastructure to support the coalition and its efforts,
as well as, updating the home page with some new graphics.

Today we are happy to report that we are ready for the next phase in
our mission to establish a more effective voice supporting the use of
free and open source software in the U.S. Federal government. Since
our launch more than 1,250 individuals and organizations have joined
OSFA and that is what we would like to discuss with you today.

We've set up working groups for specific policy areas where free and
open source software can help. Maybe you're an educator? Maybe you
have ideas on how open source can help solve our healthcare crisis?
Maybe you're a transparency wonk? Please look over the list of working
groups, register and sign up those in which you would like to
participate. We have set up the website with a "members only" section,
and expect to quickly leverage the site for open collaboration among
the members of these working groups:
http://wiki.opensourceforamerica.org/working-groups

For the more technically inclined, you'll notice near the bottom of
the page there is a reference to platform tools. We've currently
integrated Mailman as our mailing list software directly with OFBiz's
party classifications, but we would like to see this go much further.
We are looking for volunteers to help us create a mash-up or mash-ups.

Another key goal for Open Source for America is to Raise awareness and
create understanding among federal government leaders in the executive
and legislative branches about the values and implications of
open source software. The Marketing Team needs your help in raising
awareness around open source. We need any case stories (the most
popular page currently on the site) or white papers that you may have
and can share with the Open Source for America team. We are also
looking for volunteers to join the Marketing team, to help with
tradeshows, collateral creation, and means to raise awareness for Open
Source. Please sign up today on the http://opensourceforamerica.org/
site to get involved.

There's never been a U.S. Administration so sympathetic to free and
open source software. There have never been so many citizens with the
same enthusiasm for the open source process. This is an unprecedented
opportunity to profoundly change the way our government uses and
understands software. We can fundamentally change how this country
works.

Let's get started.

Kind Regards,

Open Source for America

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