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Convincing the Military to Embrace Open Source
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Dec 29, 2007 07:29 PM
from the talking-to-a-brick-wall dept.
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.'"
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DoD uses lots of Linux machines (Score:4, Funny)
NT 4.0 and US naval ships... (Score:3, Informative)
I think Linux floats here. Just check www.top500.org
I can't guarantee that all other open source projects will float as well. But, who could?
*nix and Windows (Score:3, Informative)
The more specialized gear (Aegis, and various consoles) are usually Unix or Linux, depending on the piece of gear and the Aegis baseline.
A few pieces of gear run on Windows variants, the Navigation gear (Voyage Management System) the most notable. I think it is a civilian product the military uses.
From what I can tell the Navy doesn't give two shits about what the software runs on, so l
maybe they just need to look around (Score:5, Interesting)
there are lots of projects. for example, http://brlcad.org/ [brlcad.org]
Article confuses two different problems... (Score:5, Informative)
Future Combat Systems (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I do not understand (Score:2)
I'm in the Navy; my perspective on this. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Open source is hardly excluded (Score:5, Interesting)
arpanet and bsd (Score:2)
DoD proponents of shared-source projects... (Score:2)
"Convincing"? (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//
Depends on the Branch of Service (Score:5, Interesting)
The Army and Marines use a lot of Linux. My company sells software to mostly the Army, and we have lots of Linux developers for a couple of Linux only intel software apps.
The NSA (and all the branches of service that work in/for it) uses a heavy mix of UNIX and Windows (and the largest chunk of Mac OS X of any gov't agency I know of).
Bascially, each branch operates in a fishbowl, separate from each other, so it is hard to generalize the Department of Defense's computer uses.
NMCI not a great example (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a waste of time pitching the Navy anything. NMCI outsourced their entire network infrastructure to EDS. A monumental cesspool of pork barrel contracting that puts Haliburton's Iraq contracts to shame. There are hurdles and endless reviews for getting any piece of software approved for use on Navy or Marine networks. And between SPAWAR and EDS they're busy trying to squeeze out what little internal development is left in the Navy and move everything to the giant hosted service architecture. The very people most likely to use and promote any type of open source software or a project built on open standards are the ones jumping ship and going elsewhere.
You can waste your time trying to educate DoD if you want but it's maddeningly frustrating. They'll listen and understand, then go off and do something entirely different. Which is a shame because the military is an organization that would benefit the most from an open, flexible infrastructure. One that could scale on demand, integrate disparate information sources and is reliable on legacy hardware. You would think with the massive paperwork hassles of buying anything through the government, the military would pounce on technology that let them side-step the entire procurement process and load it when you need it.
It would all be funny if it wasn't billions of your tax dollars going down the crapper.
Re:Stop talking about "open Source" (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As much as I love open source software (my servers run on Debian, my w
Re:Stop talking about "open Source" (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to say of the commercial binary distributions that are delivered from companies that are no longer in business... it happens more than you think in the defense industry world. Especially with the late 90's push to buy everything 'COTS'. Say you have version 1.1 of a database layer tool... all of a sudden that company goes out of business, I don't care how 'Mission Critical' the software is, it will never be fixed... since they did not have the source.
What you need to understand is that the source distribution model is going to change. Open source/GPL'ed code or Apache based FOSS software is going to be delivered by a defense contractor (the ones that will still be in business in 7 years i mean) and take complete authority over the delivered code. This is no different than nowadays when defense companies buy multi-million dollar software packages, delivered as binaries, that they have to maintain responsibility for. Sure, they can pass the buck when the software breaks... but when the defense contractor has the source (and hires a competent enough software engineer (not too common)) then they can make the changes themselves.
This is what the person is talking about. It doesnt matter that a Chinaman makes the changes to the code, the DoD/military just needs to trust their vendors to authenticate and take responsibility for their software solutions, in house developed, FOSS or closed binary COTS.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
When you insert code into something like the Linux kernel, you agree that from that moment on, it is licensed under GPL version 2. That does not mean you have the luxury of deciding who uses it, despite your little political foibles on that topic. "Free software" means exactly that - if the United States Armed Forces opt to use the software, then they have every right to use it. It is no longer in your control.
On another note, why should you object to having the military using code you've written? You're failing to understand that the men in uniform are under a binding contract, and that they are sacrificing every day to defend their nation. The US Military does not create policy, civilian politicians do - the military is just a tool of policy. They need all the tools at their disposal to do their job of keeping the United States safe, however that job is defined by the politicians.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the military stopped using MS software all together, it would remove Microsoft as an entity who would gain by increased military expenditure. Thank you for promoting the military-industrial complex.
Windows is the kids menu (Score:3, Funny)
It doesn't sting. It reminds me of my boy when he was 8 years old. We would take him out to nice restaurants where we could get decent food. No matter what was available he wanted the same boring things: chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, cheeseburger.
I encouraged him to try new things but it's pointless to push it because there's something in the human condition that makes us think any unfamiliar food is toxic.
So be it. Enjoy your kid's meal. I'll be over here with the diverse selection of culinary cr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
can you be more abstract? I think maybe there's a japanese conceptual artist out there that thinks your analogy is good, everyone else thinks it's dumb.