The association has spent the past few months developing the group, to be called the Open Source and Industry Alliance, said spokesman Gregory Minchak. 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 companies such as Red Hat, IBM and Sun. Linux for running server computers is growing faster than Microsoft's rival Windows, analysts say. Microsoft has lost some government orders to Linux.

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