It is a mistake to let this award stand because of the precedence it sets. Mount a concerted effort to overthrow this award. From a technical point of view, the U.S. Government's ruling doesn't have a leg to stand on. This will encourage users to write RFP's that result in the procurement of open systems solutions. RFP's must be written with a lot more precision than they have in the past.
Open systems give users choice.
The government has spent millions of dollars to develop the NIST APP and the test suites that are used to measure conformance. Let's not let this effort go to waste. A number of steps have been taken by industry players to strengthen the role of open systems technologies in the past year. Postscript Michael Goulde recants statement. Open Computing magazine closes its doors.