Background on Citizens Against Government Waste

According to CAGW's website, the group has been in operation since 1984. It is, according to its press materials "a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization" on a mission to eliminate "waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government." It claims to be "nationally recognized as the source of information on government waste," with more than one million members.

Apparently, Microsoft has been one of the corporate donors that provided funding to CAGW in the past. But the group prefers to remain mum on whether Microsoft continues to fund them and what other groups may be providing funding.

We contacted CAGW directly to find out whether Microsoft is still donating money, and how they came to form their opinions on open source use in government. We spoke to CAGW President Tom Schatz, who also declined to specify whether CAGW is still receiving money from Microsoft and said that interested parties could examine CAGW's IRS 990 filing. CAGW is required to make this document available upon request, but is not required to provide the names of its donors.

We located CAGW's filings for 2000 and 2001 online, but the donor information had been whited out. According to CAGW's website, about 85 percent of the organization's funding comes from individual contributors, with the remaining 15 percent coming from corporate and foundation gifts. In 2001, three contributors donated a total of $490,765 to CAGW, accounting for only 10 percent of the non-profit group's entire income of $4,898,720 for the year. In 2000, CAGW brought in $4,846,934 with a single anonymous donor of $150,000. If Microsoft or one of the foundations it supports is still a contributor to CAGW, the contributions are only a minor percentage of overall contributions.

To be sure, CAGW does not exist solely as an apologist or mouthpiece for Microsoft. The organization tracks government spending in many areas unrelated to the software industry, and provides ratings for members of congress, according to their criteria of eliminating government waste.

However, the group has been unrelenting in its opposition to the governments' antitrust suit against Microsoft, and was part of the "grass-roots" effort to stir up public support against the suit. The group made headlines after some of their form letters were mailed in by CAGW members who had died.

When news hit the wires late last month that Massachusetts may be favoring open source, CAGW was quick to oppose the idea -- apparently without bothering to get all the facts on the issue first. Schatz admitted that he later found that, contrary to the position stated in the release, Massachusetts was not barring proprietary vendors from competing for state contracts. Schatz says he will issue a second release with a correction "if something does come out in writing from the state...we've seen quotes, but nothing in writing."

We asked Schatz if he opposes open source software in government, and he replied that he was not opposed to open source software but was opposed to a policy that prefers or requires single-sourcing.

We also asked Schatz about the communist rhetoric contained in their "Mass. Taxpayers Hurt by Proposed Software Monopoly" release. Schatz denied that comparisons of Massachusetts' open source policy were designed to tie in with other comparisons of open source and free software to communism or socialism.

Schatz also mentioned that CAGW group received a number of e-mails from the Linux community on the topic, and had discovered that the community does not appreciate comparisons to communism or socialism. He also noted that CAGW receives strong reactions to many of their releases, not just those on the topic of Linux or open source. A cursory search of CAGW's website did not turn up references to socialism or communism as metaphors for other government waste. The reader can judge for themselves whether the tone in other CAGW releases is similar to the tone of the "Proposed Software Monopoly" release.

It may be that CAGW is poorly informed on the benefits of open source, and too easily swayed by pro-Microsoft studies. Schatz acknowledged that CAGW had not performed any studies independently to determine the cost benefits of open source products versus proprietary software.

It's clear that CAGW carries a substantial amount of influence with a widespread public audience, and with elected officials. Open source advocates would do well to keep tabs on future pronouncements from the group, and to work toward politely educating CAGW on the benefits of free software and the unnecessary waste of government funds on proprietary software.