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DoD Wary of That "Open" Word
joabj writes, "Why is the U.S. Defense Department still reluctant to use open source software, despite assurances from within the DoD itself? Blogging for Government Computer News, I found at a recent D.C. conference that to some extent the roadblock might be with that word 'open'."
I gather it is because of the act of taking on the responsibility of making a solution fit the problem. In a commercial or consulting role, someone claims to have a solution ( or be capable of creating one) that will solve the problems at hand. When a manager ( especialy within the DoD) gives the okay for a canned solution, the responsibilites are already diluted, meaning that if the solution has already been working for others, it is safe to assume that it will work for your organization. If it fails to do so, the manager can point to the other successful implementations and list the differences between your actual needs and the products capabilities. The vendor can then tailor the app more closely to your needs and the manager still looks good.
If we apply the same standards to Opensource, we can look at established projects like Apache, Mysql or even Openoffice and they are still safe because others are successfully using the software, it is not really a matter of a central point for support. For a manager to okay a more obscure project for implementation means taking on a much greater and unknown responsibility.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I was watching a C-Span panel with US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff earlier today (rebroadcast from Tuesday 9/12) and he was talking about a lot of things. However, I was very positively struck when he talked about interoperability of first responder radio networks and how it's important that we don't lock ourselves into a proprietary network should the feds mandate a specific system.
He specifically refered to making it an 'open source' setup if we were to mandate specific equipment to avoid vendor lockin.
While I don't follow the open source movement too closely, it's a major reference, from where I see it.
Because the DoD allegedly likes freedom and wants to promote it. It is their reason for existance. If "Open Source" is hurting the adoption effort use the original name "Free Software".
The last time I checked, the DOD has an enterprise license for RedHat Enterprise Linux.
They already use "Open Fire", "Open Range" and "Openpray" why not opensource.
As someone in the military, I can tell you for sure that appearance and impression matters MUCH more then function or realism. It's all about how it looks or how it sounds, not what it does or how well it does it. There's a reason our fighter planes aren't called the Kitty or the Puppy. Heh heh, the F-22 Puppy, that'd be funny.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
...is why OpenBSD is so infamous for being insecure.
http://mediagoblin.org/
Sadly, this is a fallicy that is widespread in people who are clueless about security. Take a closed source product from Microsoft for example. How many people within MS have access to that code? How many still work for MS? How many outside the US both have had access to the code and no longer work for MS?
How many are pissed that they were fired or laid off?
You have to look at security as a cost v. reward thing. It may be very expensive to obtain and reverse engineer a binary program which is used as part of a security system. But if it uses "Security through obscurity", you only have to do it once. If you use a real security system, it has to be cracked every time the keys change.
I work in a military environment. Recently our computers were transitioned to NMCI. Result: All open source is strictly prohibited. My workspace had designed a really awesome database powered by MySQL and other open source technology. When NMCI came online we were SOL. When we asked for help, we were advised we could spend a $xxx,xxx and purchase a Microsoft SQL Server license instead. When we pushed the issue, we were told that we were welcome to submit MySQL to NMCI for approval but that no one knew how to file the paperwork and no one had ever seen any software approved before. My take: It's a money scam. Somehow NMCI and Microsoft profit from each other with an exclusive agreement.
The problem is that an Open Source project would quickly become a proprietary project anyway. Take, for instance, VISTA (medical records). Yes, it's open source, hell, it was even developed by the government. However, since the VA's mission is decidedly NOT to provide tech support to the rest of the government, other departments that might use that system are left holding the bag to fully support it IN HOUSE, and that includes a metric ass-load of customization.
Where "Open Source" is really competing is in vertical, single-source support and in that department, it usually doesn't have an advantage. It's not that government is averse to using the stuff, it's just that they don't want to end up with something like the VA and VISTA where they have hundreds of full-time developers devoted to keeping it alive. They'd prefer to sign a vendor on to provide it as a service so they can get on with fulfilling their mission, not pretending to be a software development company.
The benefit of open source is that you "own" the code in the sense of having unfettered access to it and can continue developing it even if the original owner ceases to exist. However, owning the responsibility of perpetual development is precisely what government agencies DON'T WANT -- and, frankly, for good reason. They're not software companies and they're very bad at pretending to be so (take a look at the FBI case management system, for instance). When people make the case for open source on those grounds, you've just presented them with the worst nightmare imaginable, so don't be surprised if they scream and run away.
"When the source code is available to everyone, that also means that it's easier for the enemy to find security holes to exploit.
"Security through obscurity" isn't a bad thing. If you can manage to keep tight control over who has access to the source code, you've eliminated one more security issue. Obviously, the quality of the code is more important. But still."
Only on Slashdot would this be modded as flamebait. Use some logic people! Open source does not necessarely equal more secure. It often can, but it isn't a guarantee. Open source software usually presents an advantage only when a piece of software is popular enough to have enough devs poking at it. Yes, I know, all it takes is one person to find an exploit but I'm just trying to show that OSS is not inherently more secure.
Take this example: You have two software applications for, I don't know, missile tracking and detection. One is open source, one is closed source. Assume for now that they are equally secure. (Yes, this is possible!) Now assume that you are trying to compromise this system. You can grab one application on sourceforge while the other is completely secret. You have no idea how it works - for all you know it could do things completely different than the open source software. Which one will be easier to compromise? Now, I grant this logic doesn't really work for things like Windows XP where Microsoft and not the DoD create and maintain the software but the point remains for a number of situations that I can imagine.
I still don't understand why this whole "Security through obscurity is evil!" sound bite started. Everyone loves steganography around here, right? And I know the concept of hiding things in plain site is often discussed here in a favorable light. Are these not forms of security through obscurity (minus steganogaphy+encryption)? Would you prefer to store your Rolex in a closet safe or in a hidden compartment in the front panel of your dishwasher? And if you do choose the safe, should you advertise it? Maybe post a sign in the front of your house that says "The safe is in the bedroom closet on the right and contains a $20,000 watch. Come test my great security!" (Obviously a well hidden safe combines the best of both worlds here.)
Security through obscurity is not inherently bad. It has merit in *some* situations and to say otherwise is juvenille.
While this is frequently the case, it isn't necessarily the case.
Far too many people think that FOSS is just something you download off the web. Something that someone else creates, but which you, as the customer, have no control over. That choosing an Open Source product is like going to the grocery store, and that you only get to pick whatever products are being offered, and that you otherwise have no say in their design.
However, this isn't necessarily the case. I've spoken to a number of groups on this subject at length, and what a lot of people don't realize is that you can continue to use your existing sources of software, but that you simply have to demand that the developer provide it to you under an Open Source license. That's it. You can still contract out the development work to the companies you're using for custom development. You can still buy from your approved vendors list. The license that the software is provided under is a contractual issue, and thus is something that can be negotiated.
Yes, the vendor may want more money in order to provide their software as OSS. However, if you're a really large corporation or organization (like the US DoD), in generally you'll be able to specify these requirements. Either your vendors meet them, or they don't (in which case you take your business elsewhere). Same as any other requirement specified in the tendering process.
FOSS doesn't have to mean "downloaded from some guys website". For a big organization like the US DoD, this probably isn't terribly desirable (unless the software does exactly what you want, and you can either form a business relationship with the developer, do continued development in-house, or are willing to contract out feature additions and bug fixes to a third party -- this is, after all, the biggest strength of FOSS).
(I wonder what would happen if a really big organization like the US DoD went to Microsoft when it comes time to renew their bulk licensing contract and specified that the software must be licensed as OSS, and in return offered them twice the amount of the previous contract. What would win out? Greed and good business sense, or jealous protection of the code and the loss of a major customer?)
Yaz.
1) Liability. Contractors want somebody to sue if something goes wrong. The DoD will blame the contractor.
2) Specs. Usually, the system is being developed is meant to replace another system that is in-place. The only things to be changed are what are specced out. This doesn't prevent things from being entirely rewritten, but it usually stays on an existing DoD platform.
3) Speaking of platforms, check out the existing specced out platforms. Lots of people go with DIICOE, or GCCS for various reasons. Some might include a desire to get something included as a DIICOE segment, which is profitable, or GCCS, because it's ubiquitous.
4) STIGs. If there isn't a STIG written for it, you're going to have a harder time getting approval to operate it on a classified network. Even if all of your major apps are covered, you'll have to get extensions regarding applications that are not covered. Extensions are not intended to be waivers... so, you're only supposed to get an extension if you intend to replace it. It is hard to justify an extension for new software. Why not just write it in a compliant fashion? Because the security audit will be more of a PITA, they avoid any step into the unknown. Some of this is just inertia.
5) Security through obscurity. It sounds asinine, but the DoD doesn't rely on security through obscurity.... they rely on anything that is considered a good practice, obscurity is just one of those many practices. It's not that they are using telnet or anything silly like that. It's just that they want as many layers as possible.
6) Common open source is embraced. Everyone runs Apache. It's as ubiquitous as IIS. It's the things that are considered more "out there" that aren't.
All of that aside, there have been open source initiatives, but contractors have been reluctant to bite. Reasons vary, but this is the essential dynamic. The DoD retains the rights to most of the source code for projects that they fund, so, they already have the source code... they give it to anybody that they please, including the next contractor to work on the project. Contractors don't want to share source with each other for competitive reasons. Since they're all bidding to produce identical products, giving other contractors the ability to develop experience with a product can only hurt their business, this experience is their primary bargaining chip when bidding (that and the ability to undercut their competitors, or qualify for special considerations, such as being a small business).
Then there is the concern of enabling foreign interests to develop commensurate technologies. Nobody wants to share code to decode IFF signals, or to build similar systems. Thinking that the government would publish code to do these things is just asinine.
You always have your crumudgeons who also will just resist open source... which is the same even outside of DoD interests, but the DoD comes with a host of other concerns. All of these in mind, I'm not sure that the DoD is necessarily stilted against open source. Some sectors of the DoD have embraced it quite readily... these are just the faster-moving sectors who adopt technologies more readily. The DoD is a very large entity, and, as such, slow adoption, when combined with very well established platforms results in this exact behavior.
I wonder what would happen if a really big organization like the US DoD went to Microsoft when it comes time to renew their bulk licensing contract and specified that the software must be licensed as OSS, and in return offered them twice the amount of the previous contract. What would win out? Greed and good business sense, or jealous protection of the code and the loss of a major customer?)
What would happen is that MS would quickly get on the phone with their lobbyists and start persuading their captive congressmen to start leaning on the DoD to withdraw the FOSS requirement of the contract, but to keep the price at the same amount.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They'll change their mind when they go to war with a country that has paid Microsoft more than they have (or a country that Microsoft has purchased). And the entire Defense department falls apart from deeply embedded backdoors that have been sold to the 'enemy'.
Global corporations are just that, they don't owe loyality to any nation or any nation's war machine. The Americans will probably learn this (as they learn everything) the hard way.
In a similar vein, I would believe that all the ultra-high tech weapons that the Americans have sold to their more dubious allies do actually have back-doors that allow the Americans to disable these weapons should they be used against Americans by a country that has had a revolution. This was the lesson of Iran in the late 1970's. Hopefully it will be learned before all the high-tech weapons sold/given to Egypt over the past thirty years are used against the Americans and Israelis after the fall of Murabak's regime and the assendency of an Egyptian Islamic Republic.
Shared Source != Open Source.
Open Source is about more than just being able to look at and build the source code. It's about the freedom to redistribute the software with your changes at will. It's about being able to hire on whatever development company you desire to enhance and improve the software.
Shared Source is mostly just a rouse to appear open, to try to stave off a migration to more truly open options. Shared Source doesn't really give you much in the way of additional freedoms -- Open Source does (and by Open Source, I am specifically referring to software that is licensed in such a way that it conforms to the Open Source Definition).
Yaz.
Fair enough in this specific case I suppose -- however, my comments apply to any organization, particularly any large organization (as they have more money, and thus more leverage).
By way of an example, back in 2005 I attended a Health Informatics conference in Toronto, where a colleague of mine asked a panel of self-described "doers" whether or not they had considered Open Source software. I blogged about it here. In essence, they too were treating Open Source software as if it were a product that sat on the shelf, and not as something that you, as a customer, can demand. It is interesting to note that they discussed all sorts of development and partnership problems that OSS could solve for them, however collectively their attitude was pretty much to look for an existing OSS solution to their problems, and when they didn't find one, go to a commercial developer and use whatever license that developer dictated to them.
This is where organizations are going wrong with OSS. There is nothing wrong with using a commercial developer -- just mandate that the development they do for you is licensed under an OSS license. Canada Health Infoway claimed at the time they had $1.8 billion to spend in the field.
And maybe it's just me, but the customer with $1.8 billion should be the one calling the shots. The problem isn't that they lacked the clout -- only that they lacked the knowledge to know what to ask for. They are at the whim of the development companies they contract out (which has bit these people on the butt before -- there have been a number of cases in this field where organizations have spent millions of dollars and spent years having a custom solution developed, only to find that it no longer suits their current needs (which have changed since development began), and/or won't run on their current deployment environment anymore, necessitating scrapping it and starting all over again).
Yaz.
Battles are not won or lost by whoever has the best terms and conditions from the manufacturer. If you're losing, you won't be around to complain, and if you're winning, you generally won't care.
Every time a major power (such as the US) has paid more attention to giving kickbacks to corporate sponsors than it has to producing successful products or successful missions, that power has had its arse well and truly kicked. Sometimes the power wins anyway, but it is not because of its unimaginative and self-serving attitude, it is despite it. It's not very hard to win when you have total land, sea and air supremecy, and can do round-the-clock carpet-bombing campaigns. (But even then, failure of imagination is lethal. Operation Market Garden got slaughtered because of such egotism.)
Personally, I dislike military structures. I find the notion of winning an argument by having the winner define what the argument was to be primitive and tribal. However, if we're going to have such organizations, we might as well make sure they're functional and concious, rather than degenerately repeating every mistake history has ever recorded.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The term "free" is an intentional echo of cold war terminology and works for military types. Freedom is what they are all about and they are never supposed to obey an unlawful order. The American ideology of the Cold war carried over from the defeat of the German dictatorship and Japanese Empire but was firmly rooted in American history, writing and law. The core of that ideology is that free, moral people working in honest cooperation and competition are happier and more prosperous than people toiling under centralized dictatorships. Interesting expressions of these ideas can be found in the writing of Robert A. Heinlein, especially Starship Trooper, which is recommended reading in the US Marine Corps. Free software is an honest effort to make things work, guided by a free meritocracy. It works and has become best of class because people agree not to screw each other over, standards to modularize their work make it so things are interchangeable and the fittest work survives.
Officers with higher degrees will instantly appreciate the peer review nature of free software. People who have published scientific articles understand first hand the practical requirements of repeatability too. To them, if you can't repeat it yourself you have to take it on faith and no military person wants faith in anything but the almighty when they can have proof instead.
The non free people tried to call free software, "software communism" but failed and may have it thrown back in their face. Any military person will tell you that Communist contries are really nasty little fiefdoms, where who you know is more important than what you know and the top guy is in absolute lawless control of everything until murdered. This more resembles the distrustful, back stabbing and intentionally wasteful world of non free software in methodology and results.
I'll quote the gnu.org sites, see what you think:
All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as ``samizdat''. There is of course a difference: the motive for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the motive is profit. But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Especially in the military, would you want hurriedly built planes falling apart over enemy territory?
I'd want a program (milspeak for "project") that knows how to limit it's objectives, yet also creates a platform for growth and enhancement.
Thus, if we're on a tight timeline, we'd need a quickly-built airframe that at first is limited (cheap already-existing engines, older model avionics and missiles, etc), but allows easy upgrade to newer faster engines, canards, more capable avionics, misiles and strike capabilities, etc.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1