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."
He was involved in some illegal operations and they ended up shutting down the whole program. I heard they were calling for the death penalty but his execution was halted at the last minute.
Faster than the speed of light. It's a tachyon memo from now to 2003.
Just think! Once they receive the memo, 2003 and onward will happen with the new memo. Thus, the present will be altered, and we'll have all the benefits of the new memo being in effect for 6 full year.
probably has more to do with who's now running the office of the President.
No, Obama had nothing to do with it. I sent comments about the draft version of this document well over a year ago. Yes, it takes government this long to do something this logical and simple.
Obama is responsible for everything that happens in his Government.
I learned that lesson during my Officer training. It was my final 'lead' assessment, and we were on a patrol against hostile forces. My team had been briefed twice that day on the rules of engagement by me, and my 2IC was briefed by me a third time as well as he had to give the brief to another group. I'd then checked understanding of the ROE with the group after he'd done so.
We went on patrol and encountered enemy. We had one of
Within the military community, you're absolutely correct, but politicians are rarely held to the same standard. If Joe Biden shot someone without provocation, Obama wouldn't face any problems but pressure to fire Biden and have him stand trial. If Private Joe Snuffy shoots someone for the hell of it, his Platoon Leader's getting fired.
Within the military community, you're absolutely correct, but politicians are rarely held to the same standard. If Joe Biden shot someone without provocation, Obama wouldn't face any problems but pressure to fire Biden and have him stand trial.
wait, so what happened with Bush & Cheney when Cheney did shoot someone?
I wrote the memo (mostly). Here's some historical context:
In 2001-2002 (or so), the Defense Information Systems Agency was in the process of certifying RHEL as being compliant with the Common Operating Environment, which was like a DoD-version of the LSB, sorta. Rumor has it (was before my time) that a certain OS vendor (popular in the desktop space) took exception to this fact and drafted an unsolicited memo for the DoD CIO, which effectively would have banned OSS.
The DoD CIO at the time was a guy named John Stenbit. Stenbit was (and is) a strong-willed visionary, who wasn't about to roll over for anybody, so he (through DISA) commissioned a survey of how much OSS was currently in use in DoD. The study got farmed out to MITRE, specifically a guy named Terry Bollinger. The results of the study were that OSS was being used in lots of places across DoD, in some cases for mission-critical things, and interestingly extensively by the information assurance community. (e.g. snort)
So Stenbit got someone to write a new memo, which he signed in 2003. It said roughly: OSS is okay, it's just like other software, but make sure that you get approval before you use it. (Same as anything else.) Stenbit retired from gov't in 2004.
In April 2008, the Deputy CIO (Dave Wennergren) got the idea that we ought to have updated DoD guidance on Open Source Software. I believe it was suggested to him by Scott McNealy (Sun), Art Money (former DoD CIO from 1999-2001), and Bill Vass (Sun, but former gov't executive under the DoD CIO). Dave asked around if there was anybody on the CIO staff at the time who knew much about OSS. That ended up being me.
I was a CS major at MIT, class of '95; used to work down the hall from Richard Stallman. I was on ROTC scholarship and later served about 6 years as an active-duty officer. I started working as a civilian in gov't in 2002, and in 2004 I took a position with the office of DoD CIO - partially so that I'd be in the right place to advocate OSS in gov't.
Four years later, I got an golden opportunity: I got the task to figure out what the updated OSS guidance should say.
I drafted the memo, with help from lots of folks, including David Wheeler, John Scott, LtCol John Barrette, Dave Emery, Terry Bollinger, MaryAnn Kiefer, Roger Loeb, Frank Petroski, Monique Pryce, JC Herz, and probably others I forgot to mention. I briefed the concept to Wennergren. Got feedback. Revised. Sent out to other offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for coordination. Sent to the Military Department CIO offices for coordination. Spent many, many hours coordinating and revising with the Office of General Counsel (OGC) for the OSD, the Army, USAF, and Dept of Navy. It was mostly done a year ago, but it kept getting held up because someone wanted to review and comment.
One paragraph in the memo is traceable to a particularly heinous licensing debacle with a particular software vendor (not Microsoft) that affected a particular software project, and could have been avoided by using OSS.
The lawyers were by far the biggest delay. I wanted to reference the Open Source Definition (published by the Open Source Initiative), but lawyers wouldn't let me, on the grounds that doing so could be considered an endorsement of a non-federal entity, which would violate the Joint Ethics Regulation. I argued that this was a ludicrous interpretation of the JER, and eviscerates the authority granted to the CIO by the Clinger-Cohen Act. But after months of no-progress, I compromised and the final memo does not reference the OSI.
There was no direct involvement by the White House for the 2009 memo, and I don't think for the 2003 memo either. The generally favorable attitude from the current administration toward "openness" meant that I (and I think Mr. Wennergren) felt a pro-open memo would be well received, but we didn't consult with the WH, nor does the WH get that deep into agency policy - even for an agency as big as DoD. If the WH wanted to push po
The government has always acted in its own interests. Perhaps they have realised that releasing software as OSS suits their purposes.
People have always acted in their own interests. A good government (one that is of and by the people) acting in its own interest is acting in your interest as well.
Not saying this is always the case, but it does happen. Using your money to develop software that is licensed for you to use freely is a good example.
Good governments are rare if not non-existent. When you empower one group to rule over another, the temptation to use that power to benefit the ruling group is very strong.
I am a contractor on an Air Force project. My facility is up to IE 7 and windows Vista. IE 8 is strictly forbidden, and firefox is not approved for use on the project, though it works just fine with the exception that the default font is a little to small to comfortably read.
>and recommends that in certain cases the DoD release software as OSS.
How can the DoD release software under a copyleft license when the federal government is incapable of holding copyrights in the first place? I thought it was all automatically PD if it's not secret? Not that that's stopped anyone from asserting copyright when it suits them.
How can the DoD release software under a copyleft license when the federal government is incapable of holding copyrights in the first place?
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
How can the DoD release software under a copyleft license when the federal government is incapable of holding copyrights in the first place?
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).
How can the DoD release software under a copyleft license when the federal government is incapable of holding copyrights in the first place? I thought it was all automatically PD if it's not secret? Not that that's stopped anyone from asserting copyright when it suits them.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 [wikipedia.org] is from the Army Research Lab, and Delta3d [delta3d.org] is from the Naval Postgraduate School, to pick two examples off the top of my head.
It all depends on what command or where you are. I have been in places where they are very pro open source, and places where they refuse all requests to OSS. Personally I am really happy about this.
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.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday October 27, @06:22PM (#29891111)
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.
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 [dremspider.net]
This is what I have seen as a federal contractor.
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.
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. [gcn.com]
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.
hmm military using OSS (Score:3, Funny)
gives a new meaning to terms such as "fatal exception" and "kernel panic"
Re:hmm military using OSS (Score:5, Funny)
I think you meant "Colonel Panic".
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Crashes" take on a whole new importance too...
Re:hmm military using OSS (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still wondering what happened to General Protection Fault.
Is he retired? Missing In Action?
Parent
Re:hmm military using OSS (Score:5, Funny)
He was involved in some illegal operations and they ended up shutting down the whole program. I heard they were calling for the death penalty but his execution was halted at the last minute.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:hmm military using OSS (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very odd... (Score:5, Funny)
the government is acting intelligently. I feel strange.
Re:This is very odd... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This is very odd... (Score:4, Funny)
Faster than the speed of light.
It's a tachyon memo from now to 2003.
Just think! Once they receive the memo, 2003 and onward will happen with the new memo.
Thus, the present will be altered, and we'll have all the benefits of the new memo being in effect for 6 full year.
Parent
Re:This is very odd... (Score:5, Interesting)
probably has more to do with who's now running the office of the President.
No, Obama had nothing to do with it. I sent comments about the draft version of this document well over a year ago. Yes, it takes government this long to do something this logical and simple.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I learned that lesson during my Officer training. It was my final 'lead' assessment, and we were on a patrol against hostile forces. My team had been briefed twice that day on the rules of engagement by me, and my 2IC was briefed by me a third time as well as he had to give the brief to another group. I'd then checked understanding of the ROE with the group after he'd done so.
We went on patrol and encountered enemy. We had one of
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is very odd... (Score:5, Insightful)
Within the military community, you're absolutely correct, but politicians are rarely held to the same standard. If Joe Biden shot someone without provocation, Obama wouldn't face any problems but pressure to fire Biden and have him stand trial.
wait, so what happened with Bush & Cheney when Cheney did shoot someone?
Parent
Re:This is very odd... (Score:5, Informative)
I wrote the memo (mostly). Here's some historical context:
In 2001-2002 (or so), the Defense Information Systems Agency was in the process of certifying RHEL as being compliant with the Common Operating Environment, which was like a DoD-version of the LSB, sorta. Rumor has it (was before my time) that a certain OS vendor (popular in the desktop space) took exception to this fact and drafted an unsolicited memo for the DoD CIO, which effectively would have banned OSS.
The DoD CIO at the time was a guy named John Stenbit. Stenbit was (and is) a strong-willed visionary, who wasn't about to roll over for anybody, so he (through DISA) commissioned a survey of how much OSS was currently in use in DoD. The study got farmed out to MITRE, specifically a guy named Terry Bollinger. The results of the study were that OSS was being used in lots of places across DoD, in some cases for mission-critical things, and interestingly extensively by the information assurance community. (e.g. snort)
So Stenbit got someone to write a new memo, which he signed in 2003. It said roughly: OSS is okay, it's just like other software, but make sure that you get approval before you use it. (Same as anything else.) Stenbit retired from gov't in 2004.
In April 2008, the Deputy CIO (Dave Wennergren) got the idea that we ought to have updated DoD guidance on Open Source Software. I believe it was suggested to him by Scott McNealy (Sun), Art Money (former DoD CIO from 1999-2001), and Bill Vass (Sun, but former gov't executive under the DoD CIO). Dave asked around if there was anybody on the CIO staff at the time who knew much about OSS. That ended up being me.
I was a CS major at MIT, class of '95; used to work down the hall from Richard Stallman. I was on ROTC scholarship and later served about 6 years as an active-duty officer. I started working as a civilian in gov't in 2002, and in 2004 I took a position with the office of DoD CIO - partially so that I'd be in the right place to advocate OSS in gov't.
Four years later, I got an golden opportunity: I got the task to figure out what the updated OSS guidance should say.
I drafted the memo, with help from lots of folks, including David Wheeler, John Scott, LtCol John Barrette, Dave Emery, Terry Bollinger, MaryAnn Kiefer, Roger Loeb, Frank Petroski, Monique Pryce, JC Herz, and probably others I forgot to mention. I briefed the concept to Wennergren. Got feedback. Revised. Sent out to other offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for coordination. Sent to the Military Department CIO offices for coordination. Spent many, many hours coordinating and revising with the Office of General Counsel (OGC) for the OSD, the Army, USAF, and Dept of Navy. It was mostly done a year ago, but it kept getting held up because someone wanted to review and comment.
One paragraph in the memo is traceable to a particularly heinous licensing debacle with a particular software vendor (not Microsoft) that affected a particular software project, and could have been avoided by using OSS.
The lawyers were by far the biggest delay. I wanted to reference the Open Source Definition (published by the Open Source Initiative), but lawyers wouldn't let me, on the grounds that doing so could be considered an endorsement of a non-federal entity, which would violate the Joint Ethics Regulation. I argued that this was a ludicrous interpretation of the JER, and eviscerates the authority granted to the CIO by the Clinger-Cohen Act. But after months of no-progress, I compromised and the final memo does not reference the OSI.
There was no direct involvement by the White House for the 2009 memo, and I don't think for the 2003 memo either. The generally favorable attitude from the current administration toward "openness" meant that I (and I think Mr. Wennergren) felt a pro-open memo would be well received, but we didn't consult with the WH, nor does the WH get that deep into agency policy - even for an agency as big as DoD. If the WH wanted to push po
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
the government is acting intelligently. I feel strange.
Maybe they have been taken over by aliens.
Re:This is very odd... (Score:5, Insightful)
The government has always acted in its own interests. Perhaps they have realised that releasing software as OSS suits their purposes.
Parent
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Nah they'll help you. Whether you like it or not.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The government has always acted in its own interests. Perhaps they have realised that releasing software as OSS suits their purposes.
People have always acted in their own interests. A good government (one that is of and by the people) acting in its own interest is acting in your interest as well.
Not saying this is always the case, but it does happen. Using your money to develop software that is licensed for you to use freely is a good example.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good governments are rare if not non-existent. When you empower one group to rule over another, the temptation to use that power to benefit the ruling group is very strong.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait... we didn't?
NMCI (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you KIDDING me? The SAME people forcing me to use IE6 want me to use OSS??
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't complain to much about getting all the right tools for all the wrong reasons; better than all the wrong tools for the wrong reasons.
Yes, but from what I've heard, NMCI is providing all the wrong tools for all the wrong reasons.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a contractor on an Air Force project. My facility is up to IE 7 and windows Vista. IE 8 is strictly forbidden, and firefox is not approved for use on the project, though it works just fine with the exception that the default font is a little to small to comfortably read.
But ... (Score:2)
>and recommends that in certain cases the DoD release software as OSS.
How can the DoD release software under a copyleft license when the federal government is incapable of holding copyrights in the first place? I thought it was all automatically PD if it's not secret? Not that that's stopped anyone from asserting copyright when it suits them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:But ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:But ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:But ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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
there's a few useful bits of software already (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] is from the Army Research Lab, and Delta3d [delta3d.org] is from the Naval Postgraduate School, to pick two examples off the top of my head.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
SimKit, Discrete Event Simulation Library, also from the Naval Postgraduate School....
http://diana.nps.edu/Simkit/ [nps.edu]
Sean
Mil uses lots of Linux and BSD (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Crash! (Score:4, Funny)
And thus another chair is thrown in Redmond.
Re: (Score:2)
How goes the saying: Every time you throw a chair, somewhere, a Windows system crashes... or was it the other way around...?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Holy SHIT chair-throwing jokes are old... and weren't even that funny to begin with...
Re:Crash! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
C'mon Steve (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
This is great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is great... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Shameless plug (Score:3, Interesting)
Some Points on the Memo (Score:5, Informative)
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.
ABOUT TIME. Too many confused auditors in the DoD (Score:4, Interesting)
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. [gcn.com]
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.