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New DoD Memo On Open Source Software
dwheeler writes "The US Department of Defense has just released a new official memo on open source software: 'Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS).' (The memo should be up shortly on this DoD site.) This memo is important for anyone who works with the DoD, including contractors, on software and systems that include software; it may influence many other organizations as well. The DoD had released a memo back in 2003, but 'misconceptions and misinterpretations... have hampered effective DoD use and development of OSS.' The new memo tries to counter those misconceptions and misinterpretations, and is very positive about OSS. In particular, it lists a number of potential advantages of OSS, and recommends that in certain cases the DoD release software as OSS."
gives a new meaning to terms such as "fatal exception" and "kernel panic"
the government is acting intelligently. I feel strange.
[signature]
I think at least 50% of the technical people in the Navy and Marine Corp would like to see (the next version of) NMCI switch to an open-source OS.
At least they can always dream...
Government agencies are required, IIRC, to respect* private copyrights, and releasing software that is derivative of private works that are under a copyleft license under the same license might be consistent with (and might even be necessary, if the software is released at all, to comply with) those regulations.
* As I understand, its not bound in the same way a private party is, but is restricted under the law in what it can do with copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder.
In addition to using externally developed free software, various parts of the military have periodically released and continued to support some decent bits of software. BRL-CAD is from the Army Research Lab, and Delta3d is from the Naval Postgraduate School, to pick two examples off the top of my head.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Come on! I like the GPL as much as any other free-software-loving-commie but even I don't think OSS==copyleft. Public domain, along with BSD and MIT type licenses are recognized as open source (heck, software released under them is even recognized as "free" by the free software crowd).
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Just because the DoD develops software doesn't mean they have to release it at all. You can request the software under Access to Information (FOIA in the US, I think?), but they can always cite national security reasons for not releasing, say, the guidance code for the Tomahawk missile.
Without having read the memo in full, I would presume that they're talking about what license to use when releasing stuff. I'd sincerely doubt that they would use something like the GPL/LGPL to release code, but there are other open source licences that are more in line with what the government does. The ones that leap immediately to mind are the BSD and MIT licenses, both of which had their births in the need to keep government-funded developments in the public domain.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Everywhere I go, there are Linux and BSD systems.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
And thus another chair is thrown in Redmond.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
My federal manager was decidedly anti-OSS, he would state that we can't get support on the OSS, so we couldn't use it, denying anything and everything that came through. All I can say now is read it and weep.
Anything funded by the federal government including private work should be considered the property of the people and thus released into the public domain.
We, the public, should not be expected to pay twice for work done by the private sector. Either we pay for the work and have all of it released for us to utilize or the work remains proprietary and receives no funding from the public.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No software these days is developed from scratch, and the Government would be paying way, way more if it tried and probably getting significantly worse products. Most major programs utilize some proprietary code, for which the Government pays for "Government Purpose Rights". That means that the Government can use the software and often even demand the source code and deliver it to other contractors. But no one is allowed to use it for non-Government projects without contacting the original author and attaining their own license. It's kind of a Government version of dual-licensed open source.
E pluribus unum
I wrote about this a little while ago on why the federal government needs to be using Open Source. http://www.dremspider.net/?p=15 This is what I have seen as a federal contractor.
Congress shall have the power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
Hmm... I think it has everything to do with copyright protection.
"securing for limited time" is the operative clause to the subject of the law being to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The GPL is not only very clear about the when and how of exclusive control, but has in part been critical in maintaining law that has almost been completely lost to an age of fascism and tyranny.
good site:http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/020252302.shtml
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
I was at the Mil-OSS conference this year where this memo was discussed quite a bit, and I just want to mention some things in response to some of the comments. Most of this was in David Wheeler's blog (the first link), but some might have been missed.
Most government program/project managers are very slow to try new things like OSS. Generally, this is not due to laziness or not being technically up to date, but rather because the number of rules and regulations that they can get hammered for failing to follow is so large that they tend to continue to follow a safe path unless it is incredibly clear that they won’t get in trouble. This memo is designed to give top cover and make clear to all PM’s that using OSS is more than acceptable, it is actually preferred.
1) Although I can't say for sure how much the new administration's personnel in the Pentagon had to do with being signed, it probably was very little since the memo had been in production for years (rumor was that Dr. Pepper was going to give a free soda to everyone if it came out before 2010, but I don't think that's true). Over beers, one of the people involved with its writing told the story of being asked whether the memo would be out before Thanksgiving and responding, "Without a doubt." That was in 2007!! It probably emerged more from the "Open Technology Roadmap" by John Scott, Mark Lucas, and JC Herz for Sue Peyton in 2006 than any political changes.
2) Much of the memo just clarifies parts of the DoD's official position on OSS, especially areas that were major targets for FUD by contractors who are trying to sell proprietary systems to the government. For example, they would claim that procurement law requires commercial software to be used, and OSS wasn’t COTS. This was addressed by the 2003 memo, but still the misinformation persisted. Additionally, procurement law requires that software either be warranted or the source code available. Vendors would claim that since OSS isn’t warranted, it couldn’t be used, neglecting the second part of the requirement about source code.
We think it's funny. We know you don't think it's funny. That's part of why it's funny. You want to fucking kill google, and all you can do is thrash furniture. Your team can't even keep a fucking SideKick working and you want to take on Android. What is it, a decade of WiMo, and 6.5 is the best you can do?
Get over it. You're Wile E. Coyote and Google is your Roadrunner. That's some funny shit there. If they call their app store ACME that would complete the joke. Somebody get Sergey on the horn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For the Defense Department, the contractor typically retains the copyright to whatever they develop, and the gov't gets "government purpose rights" to it, or in some cases "unlimited rights". This is the way rules are laid out in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. The DFARS read they way they do because Title 41, US Code says it should be that way. (Or in some cases, Title 10).
Individual procurements can be different, depending on the negotiated terms of the contract. The DFARS specifies what amounts to "default" clauses, that are usually in place.
Keep in mind that most gov't employees (and most gov't contractors) have never actually seen a real contract, much less read it. That's what lawyers and contracting officers do... so program/project managers frequently don't actually know what intellectual rights they own.
Also, it's different for the rest of the federal government (i.e. non-Defense). Copyrights are one of the areas where the FAR and DFARS differ.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
I had been having ongoing arguments with auditors and DoD scanners about Open Source Software versus "freeware" - it's free, so that means it's Freeware - right? Finally, Daniel Risacher from the "Defense Department's Office of the Chief Information Officer" made this announcement.
Reading that, I got all excited...and waited patiently. For a bit. Finally, come April, I emailed him directly with this question:
At a RedHat conference on Oct8, 2008, you made a comment that the DoD would further clarify that OSS is not the same as Freeware/ Shareware, for those who are still confused about the subject. We are currently undergoing an audit, and are being told that we can't use various products because they are "shareware" - specifically, mysql was on the hitlist. Discontinuing use of mysql would be an engineering nightmare for us, esp since anything else would also be "freeware" according to the auditors.
Of course, 8500.2 says that we can't use shareware because we don't have access to the source code, and we obviously have access to the code of open source products. I can't find the memo that you mentioned would be coming soon - has it been released?
To which he responded:
From: Daniel Risacher ((redacted))
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 3:54 PM
To: Brian LaMere
Subject: Re: OSS in DoD?
The memo is essentially finished, but stuck in an near-endless do-loop of executive-level staffing.
Forward the names of any gov't personnel who are giving you trouble to my work email: ((redacted)), and I'll try to talk to them.
Wow...that was back in April. Things sure do move fast around there ;)
There are countless documents that say so many different things, compounded by the fact that there are a multitude of auditors who have been trained that "Open Source" is "Freeware." And since "Freeware" is disallowed according to 8500.2, they then decide that "Open Source" is too. Nevermind that the Linux kernel is Open Source, no - they would pick and choose randomly which software we could and couldn't use. On a whim they'd suddenly decide mysql was no longer ok, no matter what evidence I could provide otherwise.
G-d, how I miss that circus.
If the government created its own software, it would be far, far, far far far cheaper, especially of course any software used on millions of computers like for education, police, fire, etc, but also for the bloated central government as well. For example, school districts across the country paying $$$$$$ for hundreds of thousands of licenses for Reader Rabbit could easily pay 1/100000 the cost and developer their own. All it takes is communication/coordination/working together, which is of course what OSS is. Once you have the software, updating/improving it costs even less usually and so future costs would be very low unlike with closed software usually demanding the same high costs over and over again. That adds up.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.