this makes the most sense to me as well, but how long before the open source companies start going closed source because they see they can make a profit off their customers?

For most Open Source projects there is no company behind the software.
And look at some successful Open Source projects - Java for one, Java still remains free even though staring in their face is a million users.
And of course since the point of this is to recommend Open Source first, the governments are just going to seek out a fork or another alternative.

Uhmmm Java was closed source for most of it's life and was just recently opened up.
Anyway: Open source is good for companies in many ways.
First of all, it allows for cooperation across company boundaries: What's the point of every company developing it's own set of image decoder libraries. The results will always be nearly identical giving no one a competitive edge alone. But they can't officially collaborate with competitors, so they spin it out into an open source project and voilà. All companies can work on it together without admitting that they're working with their "enemies". Webkit would be such an example.

Yay, another internet petition! Let's all sign up guys. We can make a difference!

Clearly FunGoo doesn't know what Number 10 is :>

Actually yes. Don't project your view of the US government to other countries, the position of the politicians in European society is quite different from what it is in the US. Generally, European politicians are easier to take down, so if there's a lot of public interest they can usually be persuaded more easily to follow what the public demands. I'm not sure we can stir up enough interest for such a topic, but that's a different story.

While it might be good for the government and so forth to use such things; it wouldn't come without severe worries. Security issues for one thing come to mind. As for schools though, if we're talking teaching aids then no, they need to stick with the software that is most likely to be used and which is more readily available outside the classroom. Sadly, this is still going to be Microsoft products.
We're still in a day and age where the majority of parent's are clueless about PC software and less trusting of suggestions made by their children. As such, Microsoft Office and Works (if it's still around) are going to be the primary non-fun software at hand in those homes.
And businesses are more likely going to want to stick with Microsoft products over open source -- again for fears of security and supposed lack of support in times of trouble. Both of which they have some assurance of when they purchase licenses from Microsoft.
This again, is why schools would need to stick with the software too, as their students are most likely to find themselves in an environment post-school in which knowledge of those programs are a must.

I'm sorry, but you are not 100% right about that. There are companies behind nearly all the major OSS projects, like OpenOffice (Sun Microsystems), Wine (CodeWeavers) and every Linux distribution out there (Red Hat, Canonical, Novell, etc.). Those companies make their money by charging either for the software or for support for the software. You see, Open Source does not necessarily mean "free" as in "costs no money", it just means "free" as in "freedom of speech". Anyone can still make an OSS product and charge you money for it, but many don't actually do that.
While I agree, getting government agencies off of the MS bandwagon and onto OSS alternatives is a good thing, don't expect all that money that used to go to MS to suddenly be freed up and available to other projects. There are costs involved in a professional deployment of OSS products, they are likely lower than costs of MS products, but there are costs nonetheless.

Could you elaborate on the security issues that you mention. I agree that for schools it can make sense to offer the dominant product even if it is inferior to others, but the security issue I just don't get. I've administrated numerous servers over the years, both private and public and while I'm not going to give the usual "Linux is more secure than Windows" speech, I can't say that I've had any real trouble. Linux distributors typically provide update services which are at least equal in quality to what Microsoft offers.

Linux and its open source alternatives to MS products are nearly infinitely more secure that the current MS standard. In the entire history of Linux, there have only been 14 reported viruses, none of which has ever managed to propagate across multiple systems. Compare that to the literal billions that have propagated on Windows machines and that was enough information to convince my former employer to start a Linux pilot program in the company. That was 4 years ago and they are still running a mixed Windows/Linux/Mac network right now.
If companies and governments start using OSS products, then parents, who are employees of those companies and governments, will become exposed to and used to those alternative products. They will then be much more comfortable with having the same software at home. Honestly, once you actually use something like OpenOffice, you'll wonder why anyone would be opposed to using it. It is virtually identical to MS Office in nearly every way.
Schools are precisely where this kind of software needs to be. In order to be prepared for the future, students need to be taught how to use a computer, not how to use Windows. When I was in school in the days before Windows, this was what computer class was, you learned the inner workings of a computer, what input/output really meant, how to write basic (and BASIC) programs. You did not learn how to simply point and click. By exposing kids to alternatives to Microsoft, they are better prepared with an understanding of computers, rather than simply training in software.

You're both right. Major opensource projects typically start out or end up with a commercial entity to go along with it. In fact, it's pretty hard for major projects to reach widespread adoption without it, because without someone who does the accounting, how are you going to offer commericial-grade customer support or hire additional programmers when needed?
However, the bulk of opensource (and a part that's equally valuable) are small 1 to 3 person projects that aim at solving a very specific problem. These tools don't have any real commercial value, but their value for the public domain as puzzle pieces for bigger projects and providing education is not to be underestimated. While it needs bigger entities to put these pieces together to form a product, it would be a lot harder for the big entities to survive without them.

lack of desire to build viruses for an operating system that isn't widely used, no real success factor, the ability to propagate to other machines is hindered because there are few other machines that would even be the same revision of a kernel, etc..
If history was revisited and saw all the flavors of Linux dominant over Windows and Mac, Linux would have the virus issues and people would be toting Windows as a secure OS because of the lack of desire to build a virus for the system.
With increased popularity comes increased exploits, this is unavoidable.

I did say most - there are thousands. I'd say a good 10 maybe 20% are actually backed commercially.
I was tearful at your other post, that was lovely :P
You're right, we need to be prepared for Open Source in the future - Microsoft maybe be stable now but they certainly won't last, nothing does, especially with the economy as it is - can they hold on? What acts of desperation will they perform to make sure they're stable?
Now as far as security goes - Open Source software is typically much more secure than closed because of the collaboration. For example, Linux kernel bugs and security issues get found all the time (it's not perfect, after all) and unlike the NT kernel which has dedicated teams making updates with every new Windows, the bugs in the Linux kernel are fixed almost immediately, we get a new kernel to compile everyday and a major release almost monthly. I'm not saying this is always true.
Think about your children - people of Britain. Do you want them wasting their first £200 on bad software? THINK ABOUT IT!

Not really, license might seems expensive for "normal" users but for most "big" entity the license price is only a small fraction of software cost, support, formation, etc... is way more expensive.
Also most of the time when OOS solution are used it's not the "standard" ones but the but the professional one (like Redhat for example) and those are not free either.