14 DAY TRIAL // The U.S. Department of Defense will be holding the third Department of Defense Open IT Conference from 11th to 12th December in Washington, D.C. This demonstrates how widespread the adoption of open source software is and points out how to get the best results using this type of software.
The main goal of the conference is to show the advantages and issues surrounding the deployment of open technology development.
Brigadier General Nickolas G. Justice, a key person of the conference, notes: "Open source software is part of the integrated network fabric which connects and enables our command and control system to work effectively, as people’s lives depend on it. When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source."
Bill Vass, President and COO at Sun Microsystems Federal and Sun Microsystems Inc. will also attend the conference. Sun is one of the companies which helped government organizations solve their issues through military grade built-in security products like the Trusted Solaris operating system, identity management software, Sun Fire systems and StorageTek Solutions.
The first day of the conference will be split in four sessions, while the second will be made of only three. Here are some details on what will be discussed through the conference:
- Day 1
Session 1: Open Technology 101 - Open Standards
This will be an overview of open standards and the process of selecting and implementing within an organization and details on how to use them as a medium for interoperability. Also, a comparison between the open source, free software and public domain concepts will be made.
Session 2: Best Practices in The Use of Open Source in Government
Case studies and examples of actual implementations, with methodologies for employing open technology within Government organization, systems and processes.
Session 3: Open Technology 101 - Open Standards
Although it has the same name as the first session, this will be different, covering aspects like the basics of open source licenses and the open source business model, explaining licensing issues for open source software and more.
Session 4: Best Practices in the Use of Open Source in Government
This session will continue the second one, with the same subjects.
- Day 2
Session 1: Security and Open Systems
The first session will have subjects such as working within the security community to assimilate new tools, which allows the entire community to benefit from the results. Another subject will be the relationship between FLOSS and software assurance/security.
Session 2: Open Tools
The center of attention will be the examples of converting software created for a Department of Defense Intelligence Community customer to open source and the open source movement, focusing the technology, saving opportunities and legal issues for the Government.
Session 3: Open Technology Development for Defense Contractors
The way open source is applied by the DoD will be the subject of the last session. Technologies like chatting and VoIP communication have been used for warfighters. Another good example is the OSS Army WebPff project, with a lot of features that were never implemented in a browser-based system.
The Conference could be one of the most important events of this year in the Open Source world, so don't miss it if you're interested in Open Source and military uses of it.