Slashdot Mirror
DoD Leads In Federal Open Source Usage
GMGruman writes "A new open technology report card shows that only a third of federal agencies get a passing grade on open source usage and contribution, with the Defense Department leading the way. Savio Rodrigues explains what both government and business can learn from the DoD's open source prowess."
Most of the questions had to do not with using open source software but centered on transparent data access by the public, FOIA attitude, etc.
Read the linked executive summary and then go to the criteria page.
NewsForge did an interview some time back about Open Source and Defense...
http://samnitzberg.com/Papers/Why_open_source_works_for_weapons_and_defense__interview__JAN_2006.pdf
-- Sam
Because foreign nationals are not permitted to view sensitive information.
And your company can do development overseas, just not for the DoD.
The DoD makes extensive use of open source software and has policies in place governing (but not forbidding) employees contributions to OS projects.
I knew it! No proprietary software sweatshop could have churned out Skynet. Only the FOSS movement can produce something sublime enough to eradicate humanity.
The US DoD even gave FSF an endorsement of free software for fsf.org:
http://www.fsf.org/working-together/profiles/department-of-defense
Others:
http://www.fsf.org/working-together/whos-using-free-software
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
This is a dramatic change from the state of affairs ten years ago when the idea of running Linux and using open source in a secure environment would get you laughed out of the room. MITRE produced a white paper back then that has slowly helped to put the gears of change in motion.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Every permitted open source project is thoroughly inspected and vetted before it is cleared for use.
Inserting malicious code is a concern, but it does not answer the question why you can not farm out DoD work to foreign shops.
The requirements and design of most DoD projects are classified as sensitive. The rules for sensitive material state that it may not be distributed to any foreign national.
Beyond that, there is a legal requirement for federal projects (and most state projects) that work be performed domestically. This is mostly for economic reasons.
As a contractor you REALLY aught to know this already.
It's like this. I can go online (as a contractor or a DoD employee, I've been both) and purchase or download COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software that was created anywhere. It's COTS and it's considered market vetted. If we can examine the source code (OSS) even better. Linux is fine and was fine even before Linus became a US citizen. It's considered COTS, the Linux Red Hat sells to the DoD is the same Linux they sell to Google or Ford or Bolivia. Same with say, SAMBA, even though Jeremy Allison is Australian.
On the other hand if I hire you to write custom code for the DoD then the requirements, documents, etc are all considered sensitive and you have to hire US citizens. If the government wanted a piece of software that was able to interface with Windows AD, for instance, (and they couldn't just use Samba for some reason) they couldn't hire Jeremy Allison to head up the effort even though he has a lot of experience from his work with Samba.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I've seen a LOT of Linux these days replacing Solaris...Oracle still rules the database as from my experience. I've wanted to try to get some dev to test out using postgres, which would be a natural open source alternative as that it mimics Oracle a great deal, not extremely hard to convert to from Oracle....and it does have scalability that I still believe elludes MySQL....
Whatever we have done...we always try to discourage windows and MSSQL from the server rooms. So far so good on most projects I've worked on.
But it took a LOT of effort to get the DoD and related branches of govt to start even to consider open source.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........