Navy Commissions Open Source R&D

Lin_Matt writes "OSSI has announced a three year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy to explore and expand the usage of Open Source Software. Barry Duplantis of Red Hat will be serving as the Program Manager for this CRADA which will cover the Navy's use of OSS within the Naval Oceanographic Office's Web services, scientific computing and enterprise architecture systems."

Comments

OSS to the rescue

[crypto55]

Excellent. Maybe now Microsoft won't be invading every crevice of our military... Speaking of Microsoft, when does skynet come online?

Nothing new, but a really big step

[happyslayer]

Just a little background info first. I was stationed as Naval Air Station Meridian as the air wing's network administrator for 3-1/2 yrs starting in 2001. (I was also an instructor for the jet program.) So, my comments are from direct, personal experience.

Things have probably changed in the last year since I left, I'm sure, but a little perspective might be in order.

While I was there, I did software development for personal interest, fun, and the thrill of making something that would help everyone. No glory, no money, just because I enjoyed it. I also did some development for some Coalition projects for multinational forces, basically because they needed it and no one else had anything that was even close to being finished ("close" meaning a beta version in less than a year.) I've used a lot of different OSS, but my own personal favorites were Java or Java+Tomcat. (Go ahead and email me directly if you want to criticise those choices; I can take it.)

During my tenure, internal software development was on the run. The NMCI project (Google for "EDS" and "NMCI" and you'll find out plenty) worked to specifically kill any applications that weren't "approved." There were legitimate reasons for this, but the end result was that practically only MS and MS-compatible products were allowed...bad news for anyone who wanted to write software.

One of the reasons I left (amongst many, none bitter) was that I enjoyed working with software but knew that I would have absolutely no future in it if I stayed in. Glad to find out I was wrong.

It's a very small step, but to have it officially announced that OSS is being used for a project shows that someone, somewhere, is paying attention to the (God forgive me for using this term...personally, I hate it) changes in "paradigms" about how software is developed, used, and implemented.

I like to program; I know dozens of other military guys/gals who also like it. It's good to see that they may have a future that allows them to do some good and enjoy it.