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DoD Study Urges OSS Adoption
Krishna Dagli writes to mention an Ars Technica article about the Open Technology Development road map, a report for the U.S. government advising the DoD on ways to integrate OSS into DoD policies. From the article: "The report argues that the standard practices associated with purchasing of physical goods are not adequate or fully applicable to software. According to the report, the DoD is 'limiting and restricting the ability of the market to compete for the provision of new and innovative solutions and capabilities' by 'treating DoD-developed software code as a physical good.' The report also points out that utilizing open source technology will force the commercial software industry to respond with greater agility and competitiveness."
.. that the U.S. Government can be both very insightful and astonishingly full of crap at the same time. How do these insightful people get their jobs? Or, perhaps a better question: How do they manage to keep them? They must have will-power on par with the likes of Superman himself to exist in that kind of environment.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
What if other projects adopt "no military" clauses like we've seen lately? This certainly has to be in the list of risks that the DoD will face.
Anyway, other than toolkits and general systems (a Linux based workstation to compile code on, use OpenOffice to write documents, and such) there's not going to be a lot of OSS that will be reusable for the developers since they will be writing software for missile guidance systems and interfacing to hardware not generally available to the public. Some GUI toolkits, maybe, and GCC, of course.
Plus, how will GPL's clauses about not having to release code for things you do on-site relate to the contractor/subcontractor relationships that are present in DoD projects and if parts are sold to other countries (like selling an F-16 to Israel, for example)?
I'm obviously not talking much about office productivity and listening to mp3s and stuff because I'm pretty sure that's not what the DoD is talking about here.
The Gov't agreed that the solution was more secure, easier to manage and would save a few million $USD (in additional management, security and helpdesk costs) but they instead chose to go with Windows Server 2003 because of "look and feel." Remember, the users never saw the underlying OS!
To me this said that they weren't really open to any other options, their minds were already made up and that OSS is still largely untrusted by the neck-tie community. I still have the minutes from the meeting as a souvenir.
"Omnis tuus capsa sunt inesse nos"
The biggest problem with free and open source software in the DOD (and government in general) is the prevailing culture of "if it's free (gratis) is must be worthless." Imagine that a request is made for a system to allow collaboration for something. Two proposals come in. One is for a system using SharePoint/MSSQL/Oracle/tons of similar high priced software. The other is for Trac/Postgres/tons of free software. As a result of spending so little on licenses, the second comes in at half the price of the first. The second will be rejected almost out of hand and looked upon with suspicion, as free stuf can't possibly do the job as well as expensive stuff.
TFA boils down to a single premise:
1) Any individual struck by munitions powered by OSS is entitled to whatever rights are licensed to users of said software. For instance, if the missile was GPLed, any victims would be entitled to be cremated with a full copy of the source code and any encryption keys necessary to run said code on any homebrew missiles.
The government has "spoken" before about technology. Does it really make any difference?
Seems a long time ago the government wanted to require one standard practice of application development by stipulating Ada as the language-du-ans for coding. How many applications can you name that the government owns and are written in Ada? (rhetorical).
The government also set forth to require all computers and operating systems to be POSIX compliant in the mid to late 80's. The big hint was the government wanted to standardize and take advantage of the similarity and portability of Unix-like systems (SunOS, Solaris, ATT Unix, AIM, etc.).
Microsoft neatly sidestepped that issue in the early 90's by rolling out NT, basically a rebuilt true-preemptive OS for Windows and included a pared-down essentially brain-dead POSIX subsystem to assuage the government fiat. Microsoft had no intention of supporting it (I know, I directly asked Larry Kroger when I worked there -- his exact response was, "Tell them we don't support it"), and thumbed their nose at the notion of standard and interoperable computing -- it was counter to their business mission of monopolizing the industry.
It's great to think the government wants more emphasis on Open Source (as well as that can be defined), but if history serves, this is another tiny blip on the radar screen. Open Source can't compete in marketing with deep-pocketed vendors and chummy outings on the golf course.
But, we can hope. Come to think of it, maybe there's an "aha" here... could the foot-in-the-door for OSS be more effective marketing? Where could that investment originate? Or, what about pledging support via some write-in campaign to Senators and Representatives?
As we have see recently, and if history is a teacher we can count on the US Government to consider itself above the law. Do we really think that the Military will give a rats ass what us hippies think? GPL clause or not; they will use whatever the hell they want to.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Now slowly the next generation of IT managers with more experience are coming up. Now a days software costs lot more than hardware. Hardware prices have been dropping like a stone for decades and the software costs have stopped dropping after Microsoft consolidated its market lead and vendor lock in. In 1994 I paid 2700$ for a 90 MHz Pentium with 570 KB disk and 2X CD-ROM. MS Word was already above a 100$ then. In 1990 MS-Word was selling for 50$.
I keep returning to my favourite examples of light bulbs and car tires. Would anyone buy a car that can accept only Goodyear tires or build a home that can only accept GE bulbs? Car tire standards are set by SAE not GM or Toyota. It is just a matter of time before we have full interoperability to standards defined by a body like IEEE. Heck, if the Fortune 500 companies chip in a million bucks each to set up an "Institute for Sofware Ineroperability Standards" to work with IEEE and ACM to make experts define interoperability they will recoup the investments in no time.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I agree with your statement that there are lots of insightful and intelligent people (on both sides of the aisle, so to speak) in the U.S. government. I also agree that the "insane" ones get a lot of press time. However, I don't think that is the whole picture.
Regardless of the large-scale bureaucracy, whether it is a government or a corporation, it seems that at a certain size-point there comes a time that the bureaucracy as a whole begins to exhibit various forms of emergent behavior that can't be explained by examining the individual parts. No more than one can recognize the concepts of sentience and reason the human mind brings forth, by examining a single neuron, we should not be surprised that a bureaucracy works in the same manner, and that we can't surmise how it will act by singling out individual employee contributions to the organization.
Inevitably, in most large bureaucracies this emergent behavior tends toward baser outputs, what we humans perceive as harmful, beligerent, corrupted, insane, and in some cases, "evil" behavior. The greater the size of the bureaucracy, the more likely this is to be the case. Interestingly, we seem to see this behavior mainly in bureaucracies where the accumulation of wealth is a goal of the organization. In instances where that goal is not the prime motivator for the organization (say, for instance, a non-profit), these emergent behaviors tend not to manifest themselves (I will admit this is baseless conjecture on my part - I have not seen any study regarding this idea - but anecdotal evidence seems to bear this out).
For governments, it would seem that to prevent this from occurring, the proper thing to do would be to limit the government's ability to accumulate wealth (whether through taxes or warfare). Ideally, it should be able to function optimally without such accumulation, however, for most of the developed world, the economic engine driving the society is capitalism, which is at odds with this idea. Furthermore, large corporate bureaucracies have their hands in the development and guidance of the government - something that was warned against after WW2 as the rise of the "military-industrial complex".
I tend to wonder if these emergent behaviors we see aren't actually intelligent (if not necessarily rational), and that this manipulation isn't actually purposeful, perhaps to ultimately eliminate or marginalize humans? If so, is there anything we can do to detect it, or even stop it? Can a neuron ever know about the mind? Furthermore, if such a neuron did, what would the mind do if it found out?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon