Convincing the Military to Embrace Open Source

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.'"

DoD uses lots of Linux machines

I can tell you, but then I'll have to shoot you...

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No need to shoot me. I already know, and it is, indeed, very cool stuff. The military definitely embraces open source, especially with some of the more interesting high performance stuff that they do.

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The military definitely embraces open source

"The military" encompasses so much as to not mean much. Proprietary vendors still have vast swaths of the DoD by the short hairs. Until very recently, for example, the US Navy had the largest deployed WinNT4.0

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The most devastating thing in the DoD arsenal is the bureaucracy.
Quite amazing what the DoD accomplishes in spite of itself--the truest testament to the unquenchable American spirit.
Case in point: http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/icenter/budget/ppb [defenselink.mil]

NT 4.0 and US naval ships...

NT 4.0 and US naval ships...

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

On Navy ships workstations are Windows 2000 for office work and for Sailors to email home (everyone has a UNCLAS account).

The more specialized gear (Aegis, and various consoles) are usually Unix or Linux, depending on the piece of gear and the Aegis baseli

maybe they just need to look around

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

Article confuses two different problems...

The article confuses two different problems. One problem is redaction, the other is a network spill. The two are very different. Redaction is "editing problem," deleting classified material from a document to make it unclassified. In a network spill, classified information is accidentally put on an unclassified system. A spill is a much more complicated problem. You have to determine how many systems were "infected," and sanitize those systems. And sanitizing may require the destruction/confiscation of the system. You also have to determine whether anyone without a clearance had access to the material. And I would guess that the vast majority of the cost is labor, not software.

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You also have to determine whether anyone without a clearance had access to the material.

And what do they do in that case?

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You also have to determine whether anyone without a clearance had access to the material.

And what do they do in that case?

We could tell you, etc., etc., etc.

All seriousness aside, I'm sure that it depends on a number of things: the clearance that th

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The problem with Open Source and Government lies down to one thing. Who to blame I know, I know. If they had Microsoft products and there was a huge problem that is Microsoft fault they will blame them but nothing will happen. But it would come down to

Future Combat Systems

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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For those that don't know SOSCoE is a closed source attempt (and failure) to allow application to actually talk to each other. ...your tax money being put to good use!

Well, thank you for your input! After all, what better place is there to get reliable

I do not understand

Haven't the US military been using Solaris with gnu tools since long before Slashdot and linux existed?

I'm in the Navy; my perspective on this.

The military is starting to use open source software in more ways than people on the outside may realize. MediaWiki [mediawiki.org] 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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I'm, (sort of) in the Air Force, and I concur. DoD uses a variety of systems. Apple, MS, Linux, Solaris, UNIX, etc, etc. Are we talking about Linux on everyones desktop? Not a chance. That would require a decade+ of investigation and deliberation. But for

Open source is hardly excluded

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.

arpanet and bsd

both the arpanet (essential predecessor to the internet) and bsd unix (essential predecessor to linux) were open source projects funded in large part by darpa, which is the american military. so saying that the military doesn't embrace open source seems k

DoD proponents of shared-source projects...

Didn't you mean to write "open-source"?

Not that hard

NASA World Wind [nasa.gov] is open source and is uses by the DoD and other governmental groups.

Refer them to the NSA

They've kicked the linux tires a time or two. Secured it a bit.

"Convincing"?

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//

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A project I work with closely from a military type wanting to know the author of a particular 3 line bug fix, their email address, nationality, etc. As the fix was about 2 years old we had his name but no current contact info.

He went away disappointed. N

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A project I work with closely from a military type wanting to know the author of a particular 3 line bug fix, their email address, nationality, etc. As the fix was about 2 years old we had his name but no current contact info. He went away disappointed. No

Open Source or shared source?

Is the article summary talking about Open Source or Microsoft's Shared Source? They're Not At All the same thing.

Depends on the Branch of Service

The Air Force is hell bent on lining the pockets of Dell and Microsoft, with their stupid, COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) procurement requirements.

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.

Use open source or die

With the most advanced inertial navigation software, image sensors, microprocessors being developed in other countries, they have to use open source and download it from other countries just to survive.

NMCI not a great example

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.

OSS doesn't meet quality standards

The fact is that most OSS projects are ill suited to the corperate and government environment.

OSS focuses on the latest and greatest features, government doesn't, they want tested and proven versions. OSS EOL's stuff long before it would be considered "te

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The fact is that most OSS projects are ill suited to the corperate and government environment.

At least my open-source web browser warns me when I misspell "corporate" while trolling.

OSS EOL's stuff long before it would be considered "tested" in something l

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"Yeah, it's a shame the copies of RHEL5 I deployed earlier this year "

all you did was prove my point dumby. READ AGAIN - i said the only situation where OSS will work is when you pay developers to maintain it for you, which is what a RHEL support agreemen

Windows is the kids menu

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

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WTF does chicken nuggets and your kid being a spoilt brat have to do with anything I said?

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.

Re:Stop talking about "open Source"

Have you ever done a code inspection on a binary? Have you ever written a patch for one?

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> 99% of military purchasing guys haven't done a code inspection of anything.

Why would purchasing guys be doing code inspections?

> Haven't you [ever written a patch for a binary]?

Yes. A tedious and error-prone process.

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Exactly, thank you. Reading this story, and the one about Linux being used in various devices, those were my thoughts exactly. Sometimes (especially with hardware), it's important to a user how many others adopt something, so that whoever makes it will hav

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This doesn't apply in the military. If something breaks, it will get fixed pronto or heads will roll at the vendor. In the unlikely event that the vendor is seriously dorked up, I assure you it will still get fixed through other channels. These sorts of mi

Re:Stop talking about "open Source"

you dont understand. the problem is that with binary distributions, like the majority of COTS software that the DoD/army buys you usually settle on a version number to do all of the testing with. Say, version 1.1. The rest of the system is built around 1.1 and all of its (intended and unintended) functionality. When there is a problem with the software version, commercial vendors fix the problem in the current version. Say you bought version 1.1 in 1997, there is no way that the company is going to sell you 1.1.88 when they are on version 6.0.

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.

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> 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.

Since the DoD has the source an

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> Another issue depends on the licensing of the open-source code. Many licenses would *NOT*
> allow the military (or whoever) to legitimately use the code in their closed source apps.
> That's not all licenses, but there are ones that might legally

whoops (used a "less than" symbol)

Then they are as firmly entrenched in the M$ death spiral as we are. Although *some* of our kit is Linux, it's very specialized and it would be on less than 1% of computers that I have come in contact with. It's just too easy to keep the "status quo" goin

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The nicest thing about NMCI might be that it scares the Navy/Marine Corps off of all commercial software solutions. The system is incredibly dysfunctional and expensive. Moving a computer from one user to another or from one side of the room to the other u

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You aren't giving the organizations in the military that work with this stuff enough credit. Hint: Your beloved internet started as a military research project. Now think how much farther they have come since then with stuff the private sector won't rea

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It really isn't just the military, any organization with a huge staff, numerous computers spread across multiple continents is going to have a difficult time keeping things updated like that. To make things more complicated, some of the gear is out at sea,

See? Open source is good!

We can stop errors like....uh...this.

Re:No thanks

Then stop contributing to GPL projects. The license allows users to do whatever they want with it, to whatever purpose.

Re:No thanks

Judging by parent's User ID, I'm going to karma hell for this, but too damn bad.

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.

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You've got a great point! In fact, let's take it a bit further. Why should we do ANYTHING to help the military? I say you start a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at destroying the US military's ability to wage any sort of warfare whatsoever. Don't

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So are you saying that keeping the military in a state where it must funnel money to corporate interests is a _good_ thing?

If the military stopped using MS software all together, it would remove Microsoft as an entity who would gain by increased military e

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nonsense

They have a budge like anyone else, and their purpose is very clear, to protect america's waters and interests abroad.

I suppose you probably think the government can't go broke because they can print more money to?