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Convincing the Military to Embrace Open Source

Posted by Zonk on from the talking-to-a-brick-wall dept.

drewmoney writes "Misconceptions about what 'open source software' means has made elements of the US Defense Department reluctant to deploy in a live environment. DoD proponents of shared-source projects are now working to reverse this trend by educating IT decision-makers and demonstrating OSS usefulness. 'The cost of cleaning up a "network spill" that introduces classified material on an unclassified network is running about US$11,000 per incident on the Navy/Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), so the free Secure Save tool could produce monetary savings for the Navy. Additionally, it would cover more file formats than the costly commercial redaction product currently available on the NMCI.'"

5 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. maybe they just need to look around by phrostie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    maybe they just need to look around and open their eyes.
    there are lots of projects. for example, http://brlcad.org/

  2. Future Combat Systems by samkass · · Score: 5, Informative

    The entire "Future Combat Systems" of the US Army is based on SOSCoE, a virtual environment that currently runs on linux. It includes development environments for C/C++/Java, but not Microsoft or .NET (yet, anyway). I'm not sure where the meme came in that the DoD is anti-linux. They are certainly proportional in their linux market share as the rest of the world, I'd say.

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    E pluribus unum
  3. I'm in the Navy; my perspective on this. by palegray.net · · Score: 5, Informative

    The military is starting to use open source software in more ways than people on the outside may realize. MediaWiki is used in some interesting ways, as is a certain open source instant messaging platform. Without going into detail on things that are best not discussed outside classified environments, there are other large open source software projects that have made their way into the server room.

    The issue with Microsoft dependency is a long-standing problem having to do with extremely long certification processes. Another issue is the fact that in order to use anything new, the military winds up spending insane amounts of money on retraining personnel, restructuring documentation, testing in live combat environments, etc. Essentially, it's all the major problems of large corporate uptake of open source projects, with additional dependencies.

    Things are slowly improving. The military uses what works, and for much of what we use in our infrastructure solutions developed on Microsoft platforms still work. That's not saying they're necessarily the best answer to a given technology need, but they're already in place and it will take some time for new ideas to get adopted.

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    512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
  4. Open source is hardly excluded by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Open source software is the only type of software that is often mostly made by foreigners that the DoD will use. Proprietary software that is owned by a foreign company cannot be used without extraordinary extenuating circumstances. Even if the whole development is done in America, the legal ownership by foreign nationals takes the proprietary software automatically off the approved software lists.

  5. "Convincing"? by Courageous · · Score: 5, Informative


    I work as an integrator and inserter of technology into military organizations.

    Hence, I can say with some authority that they are, for the most part, Talready convinced. To best characterize them, it would be: "interested, but cautious". "Convinced, but careful". They want to save money, believe that open source can be good, but have certain matters of due dilligence that they need to attend to.

    There remain "paperwork" issues of getting open source into SCIFs, particularly when the provenance of the open source is questionable. Not all open source is born equal, you know. Some is pretty shitty, and some is even written by people in countries that actually DO have active spying programs against us (if you were to say that because the source is there, and open for everyone to see, that this reduces risk, I would agree with you, however this statement that the risk "ought" to be less is sometimes insufficient for these classified area types, dontcha know).

    BTW, there is a new DoD directive that has been issued, ordering all defense procurement to include an assessment of open source products as an alternative to proprietary software. How is this "not convinced"?

    C//