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Military Enlists Open Source Community

Posted by samzenpus on from the freedom-is-free dept.

jmwci1 writes "The US Defense Department is enlisting an open source approach to software development — an about-face for such a historically top-down organization. In recent weeks, the military has launched a collaborative platform called Forge.mil for its developers to share software, systems components and network services. The agency also signed an agreement with the Open Source Software Institute to allow 50 internally developed workforce management applications to be licensed to other government agencies, universities and companies."

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. I Dunno by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

    This could end badly. Here's all these geeks working hard at coding, only to be interrupted by one of their own doing a mock-Python "Stop the skit! This is much too silly." and then everyone doing the "military fairy" song.

    The Pentagon may not survive.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  2. How dare they? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bloody open-sores communists. Don't they know that military contractors have a god given right to profit?

    1. Re:How dare they? by RingDev · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No Joke. In 2001 the US Marine Corps disbanded the 4067 MOS. While we used to have Marines, in uniform, writing code for a wide assortment of tasks (from menial office apps to classified COM vaults and even some flight system work in ADA), we moved to consultants.

      Replacing a $14,400/year Corporal with a $120,000 civilian. One who doesn't have to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

      -Rick

      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    2. Re:How dare they? by Eil · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Replacing a $14,400/year Corporal with a $120,000 civilian. One who doesn't have to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

      On one Air Force base that I was stationed, it was very common for a company (usually Lockheed Martin) to "convince" the military that a certain position would be better served by a civilian contractor. It was just mere coincidence that the military person currently occupying that job just happened to be within early retirement age and that, even more coincidentally, he would be the one hired by the contractor to fill the civilian position after the military position was closed.

      Eventually, entire portions of the base were run by civilians (civil engineering, the supply chain, avionics shops, test equipment maintenance, and vehicle management and maintenance are only a few that I recall off the top of my head) and the only military members that were left were those that legally couldn't be replaced by a contractor because they would be needed if the unit were to deploy anywhere.

      I don't think most Slashdotters realize how big/powerful/corrupt the entire defense contracting industry really is.

  3. Kids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    an about-face for such a historically top-down organization

    See the guy in the photo using BRL-CAD to optimize the M1 Abrams battle tank for crushing innocent Iraqi children? He wrote ping, contributed to BIND and other stuff. Go read some RFCs, early ones in particular, and note the number of .mil domains credited and try to imagine how many millions of lines of code made it from those reference implementations into BSD.

    The DOD, particularly through DARPA, has been giving away code longer than most of you have been alive. Please, for the love of fuck, stow your naive preconceptions. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.