Forty years of GNU

Hi Jmalcolm. There are lots of clear examples, but the wording of your question is strange. I wonder if you're setting this up so that you have ways to reject pretty much any information given to you. For example, if a government does something that fulfils your three criteria but doesn't call it "free software", or doesn't explicitly mention FSF. Or, I don't know how you'll define "social policy"...

But, assuming it's an honest question...

You've asked three questions:

1. Name a government that advocates the use of free software

Here's a list:

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observ...

2. Show that governments use the FSF's definition

The US Securing Open Source Software Act:

"OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.—The term ‘open source software’ means software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution."

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/...

"Use" and "modifiy" are repeated (as "re-use" and "enhance"), but the definition is FSF's four freedoms.

For a European example, the Cyber Resilience Act has a recital 10 for "free and open-source software" which says:

"...software, including its source code and modified versions, that is openly shared and freely accessible, usable, modifiable and redistributable..."

Again, that's the four freedoms.

I've never seen a government using a definition based on some other authority, for example, trying to summarise the OSI's Open Source Definition, even when using the name "open source".

3. Show that it's a social policy

The many documents in that first link show that the laws which finance or encourage or require the use of free software do so for digital sovereignty, transparency, or to implement the idea of "public money, public code".