The government set the OSI networking standard, which nobody uses.

Judge as of June 1995 on what the quote says: (a) OSI was a networking standard set or mandated by government, and (b) almost nobody used it. The quote does not say OSI was 'finally abandoned', so that is not tested. Part (a) holds if governments formally adopted or mandated OSI, for example the US GOSIP procurement mandate (FIPS 146) or similar national or EC mandates. That is so even though ISO/CCITT standards bodies drafted it. Part (b) holds if by mid-1995 OSI protocols had negligible real-world deployment compared with TCP/IP for internetworking. True: both parts hold. Mostly true: both hold in substance, but OSI kept small niche uses (e.g. IS-IS routing, X.400/X.500 derivatives), or government's role was endorsement or mandate rather than authorship. Mixed: only one of the two parts holds. Mostly false: OSI saw meaningful but declining use in 1995, or government played only a minor role. False: OSI was widely used in 1995, or government had no role in setting or mandating it.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 GOSIP overview OSTI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information), record of a Monsanto Research Corp. Mound report · 1 January 1996

   “The U.S. Federal Government has mandated use of the International Standards Organization`s Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols throughout all federal computer network services and products.”

2. E2 Computer History Museum · 1 January 2026

   “OSI (Open Systems Interconnect), backed by European telephone monopolies and most governments, was favored.”

3. E3 Computer History Museum · 1 January 2026

   “It was well-defined, supported by various governments and benefited from the example of XNS and other protocols. But it suffered from too much complexity and too little working code.”

4. E4 OSI: The Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda Protocol of Broken Dreams marknichols.com (Mark Nichols, personal site) · 11 October 2026

   “GOSIP is not exclusive. When an agency implements GOSIP, other protocols may be procured and used in the same network.”

5. E5 Federal Register, Volume 60 Issue 93 (Monday, May 15, 1995) U.S. Government Publishing Office / Federal Register (notice by NIST, Department of Commerce) · 15 May 1995

   “FIPS 146-1 adopted the Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP) which defines a common set of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols”

6. E6 Federal Register, Volume 60 Issue 93 (Monday, May 15, 1995) U.S. Government Publishing Office / Federal Register (notice by NIST, Department of Commerce) · 15 May 1995

   “removing the requirement that Federal agencies specify GOSIP protocols when they acquire networking products”

7. E7 OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t IEEE Spectrum · 30 July 2013

   “Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce issued a mandate in 1988 that the OSI standard be used in all computers purchased by U.S. government agencies after August 1990.”

8. E8 OSI: The Internet That Wasn’t IEEE Spectrum · 30 July 2013

   “By the mid-1990s, the Internet had become the de facto standard for global computer networking.”

On part (a), the US government mandated OSI through FIPS 146/GOSIP for federal network procurement, and other governments backed OSI as well (E1, E5, E7, E2). However, the quoted sources call it the International Standards Organization's OSI protocols, so government's role was to mandate and endorse OSI rather than write it. On part (b), by the mid-1990s the Internet had become the de facto global networking standard (E8), and OSI suffered from "too little working code" (E3). In May 1995 NIST moved to remove the requirement that agencies specify GOSIP (E6), which bears on how binding the government's OSI mandate was. Both parts hold in substance, but because the government mandated rather than authored OSI, the verdict is mostly true rather than true.