US Homeland Security to Support Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "CNET is reporting that the US Department of Homeland Security is extending its support to open source software. The DHS will be giving Stanford University, Coverity, and Symantec a $1.24 million grant to improve the security of open source software. From the article: 'The Homeland Security Department grant will be paid over a three-year period, with $841,276 going to Stanford, $297,000 to Coverity and $100,000 to Symantec, according to San Francisco-based technology provider Coverity, which plans to announce the award publicly on Wednesday.' It's nice that our tax dollars are being used for the right stuff."

Comments

Not necessarily so...

[meringuoid]

I understand that most open source is written by people who care and are either college students or white collar workers who have time either at work (employer consenting), or at home if they have little family life.

Most open source, in terms of sheer number of projects or lines of code? Probably. But in terms of usage?

The major open-source projects have got corporate backing now. Linux, for instance? Lots of work being done on that by IBM, in addition to the employees of the likes of Red Hat or SuSE. Similarly, I believe AOL has been backing Mozilla lately, and the number of old-skool Unix utilities that contain copyrights of the University of California is enormous - after all, they wrote BSD.

It's not just anarchist hackers now. Open source has gone commercial in a really big way.

Why "Flamebait"?

[IAAP]

We've all have heard about the wasteful spending by states and municipalites regarding the spending of money thrust upon them by Homeland Security. It's a matter that concerns both sides - a little. Homeland Security has become yet another avenue for pork barrel spending, and as a result, states are getting money that may not help the fight on terrorism. Senate

At least the department of homaland security isn't wasteing all of thier money.

I agree. This will promote OSS and help reduce the costs of our Government. So what's the problem with what the parent said?

Re:Err wait a second.

[IAAP]

FTFA: Programmers working on the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, BIND Internet infrastructure software and Firefox browser, for example, will be able to fix security vulnerabilities flagged by the system before their code becomes part of a released application or operating system.

And: This could be a boon for open-source security, said Stacey Quandt, an analyst with Aberdeen Group. "The benefit for open source is that it enables it to be up to date with commercial technology innovation," she said.

Your point FTFA"Why does the DHS think it is worthwhile to pay for bugs to be found, but has made no provision to pay for them to be fixed?"

I agree that it's kind of shitty that money isn't going to OSS. Then again, they're getting free security checking that'll can be applied and distributed for free. Hopefully, someone in Gov. will see the light and spend some money on OSS to have the security holes fixed. Donations to th OSS organizations affected by the screening?