Trade Group, Firms Plan to Lobby for Linux

The Computer and Communications Industry Assn., a trade group representing Microsoft Corp. rivals including Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp., plans to form a lobbying group to urge governments to use the Linux operating system.

The association has spent the last few months developing the group, to be called the Open Source and Industry Alliance. The group would try to get U.S. federal and state governments and other nations to consider using Linux and other so-called open-source software.

Open-source programs can be copied for free from the Internet, and modified versions are sold by firms such as Red Hat Inc., IBM Corp. and Sun.