[afarrell]

The current state of federal IT contracting is so horrendous, that it is worth trying something if it has a 50% chance of failure, but how much harder is it to get contractors to work on a project if your contract mandates that it be open source or Free Software?

seanherron, do you work for a contractor or are you an in-house developer for the FDA or another federal agency?

[seanherron]

I'm a federal employee serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow (http://whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows) working on open data initiatives at the FDA. We worked with a contractor to build the platform and were happy to find they were incredibly excited about the prospect of open source.

[afarrell]

Well if the site turned out well and you liked the experience of working with them, give the contractor some love! Who are they?

[mmohebbi]

We're Iodine (http://www.iodine.com), a consumer health startup based in SF. Our backgrounds are varied but many of us came from Google, including three of us from the search team. We're big believers in both open source and open data and we're excited to be part of openFDA!