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Defense Dept. Memo Explains Open Source Policy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the bureaucracy-miring-in-itself dept.

TonyStanco writes "Big news. DoD issued a policy statement leveling the playing field for Open Source. We have the memo on the Center of Open Source & Government site." The requirements listed in this memo make me think of a company policy along the lines of "You can bring your baby or toddler to work, so long as it can talk, feed itself and stick effortlessly to the ceiling like a spider." See this PDF for more information about National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Policy (NSTISSP) number 11.

5 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. Eeep. Spider-babies by KU_Fletch · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can bring your baby or toddler to work, so long as it can talk, feed itself and stick effortlessly to the ceiling like a spider." Thanks for that, now everytime the AC comes out at work I'm going to expect an army of spider-babies to pop out and steal my printer.

    --
    It's not stupid. It's advanced.
  2. True Story... by craenor · · Score: 5, Funny

    What is bureaucracy?

    This guy wants to clean out a room in the Pentagon, stacked to the ceiling with boxes labeled, "non-essential documents". So he starts a study showing how much space they can save by ridding themselves of all of these useless documents.

    A few months later they complete this study, and send it up for a review. A board determines that this is a great idea and they can in fact save tons of space by ridding themselves of all of these documents, with one stipulation. They must make copies of all the documents for their records...

    Craenor

    1. Re:True Story... by mao+che+minh · · Score: 5, Funny
      I live in a military town, and hence know a lot of folks that work in the local military bases (from actual military personel to contractors to just plain non-affiliated civilians). I have heard many such stories.

      My favorate involves moving a set of offices (used by Naval training personel, my friend is an officer and IT worker in said office) from Windows 98 and 2000 to Redhat. Yes, it is happening in a few places withing the military. Anyways, the IT staff there has been utilizing Linux and BSD for years, and decided to write up a report to outline it's effectiveness and security so that they could obtain approval to use it for all of the desktops under their control. Needless to say, they got approval with the usual stipulations (such as: some workstations demand Windows for certain software that only runs on Win32, and emulation is not an option). But, the military wanted them to also keep on hand a collection of spare Windows 2000 workstations "just in case", because "Linux is not yet proven" - that was their honest answer (why they needed entire workstations and not just a collection of "ready to go" Ghost images was a point of laughter in itself). The total: 50 workstations for a network of 200 systems. The cost of paying for those workstations and then keeping them on hand, and then paying for the Win2k clients and licenses for the next year was nearly triple the cost of moving the existing workstations over to Redhat 7.x (which was the newest RH release at the time) and hiring outside training for whatever training they might need (which didn't involve a move to Open or Star Office, because they were planning on running Microsoft Office anyways).

      One of the people that "approved" the move was father-in-law for a local Microsoft sales person. Sure the plan got "approval" due to it's merits, but the contigency plan effectively killed the move.

  3. I don't see the problem... by bethanie · · Score: 5, Funny

    My toddler can do all that. Can't yours?

    ....Bethanie....

  4. Baby... Spider... What? by ryanvm · · Score: 5, Funny

    "You can bring your baby or toddler to work, so long as it can talk, feed itself and stick effortlessly to the ceiling like a spider."

    Hi Timothy, we'd like to make you an honorary member of our organization - PIFCA (People Incapable of Forming Cogent Analogies).

    You belong with us like a marmot is comfortable with peanut butter.