U.S. Department of Defense Will Consider Open-Source Solutions

While open-source software and applications have been providing a generous and efficient way to replace proprietary software in our day-to-day life, many Governments around the Globe have hesitated in adopting such solutions for their official platforms. Last week, the U.S. Department of Defense has released to the public a memorandum in which it encourages and recommends certain types of open-source platforms and situations in which its usage should be embraced.

The memorandum presents a series of strengths and weaknesses choosing to opt for a proprietary or open-source application should be based upon. The paper discusses and eliminates worries publicly expressed by Government officials in the past regarding security issues.

Former problematic topics discussed in the past dealt with the public availability of the source code that led officials to conclude that this presents a real security issue for any kind of usage in Government mediums. Through this memorandum, the DOD expressed more interest in keeping up to date with current technologies and methods of attack than its software security, giving a public vote of confidence and support to the communities that are keeping those OS applications alive.

Nevertheless, the paper does not recommend usage of any open-source solution, but only of those heavily supported by its community, with a good track record of issuing fast security patches and bug fixes in the past.

“The continuous and broad peer-review enabled by publicly available source code supports software reliability and security efforts through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise go unrecognized by a more limited core development team,” read the paper.

These guidelines in adopting open-source as a viable solution in current DOD programs also treated the issue from an economic point of view, discussing and recommending the usage of public software especially in large communities or work environments, where a commercial solution will only bring costs through the roof.

“Since OSS typically does not have a per-seat licensing cost, it can provide a cost advantage in situations where many copies of the software may be required, and can mitigate risk of cost growth due to licensing in situations where the total number of users may not be known in advance. [...] By sharing the responsibility for maintenance of OSS with other users, the Department can benefit by reducing the total cost of ownership for software, particularly compared with software for which the Department has sole responsibility for maintenance,” read the guidelines.

For further reading and analysis, the rest of the guidelines can be consulted here. Also as a quick note and as the first step in following this policy, the White House's website has recently switched from a proprietary solution to the renowned Drupal CMS.