There are also many people who are trying to modernize software development practices in the DoD (and the US government more generally).
The official US DoD policy is very pro the use of open source software. The DoD's official policy on open source software is "Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS)" (2009), available at: http://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/FOSS/2009OSS.p...
That policy says:
"a. In almost all cases, OSS meets the definition of “commercial computer software” and shall be given appropriate statutory preference in accordance with 10 USC 2377...
There are positive aspects of OSS that should be considered when conducting market research on software for DoD use, such as:
(i) 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."
(Full disclosure: Dan Risacher is the point-of-contact and lead author of this policy, but I helped write the policy.)
The claims that "Open Source is bad because anyone can put anything in it" is ridiculous. Anyone can edit proprietary software, too - just use a hex editor. The issue isn't whether it's technically possible to edit software (it always is), the issue is who has control over the supply chain. In both proprietary and open source software, there are only a limited number of people who have the privilege to determine what is accepted into the software. In addition, in almost all OSS you have a public record of who made what change (and what the change was), and everyone can see the result.
"We'd rather have someone to call" is completely legitimate. So, go hire someone. There are a lot of organizations who would be happy to take money in exchange for a person to call. It's how many companies make their living. This shift happened in the early 2000s.
To those so-called "IA" people who don't understand that open source software is a key aspect of software development today: welcome to the 21st century, perhaps you'd like to try living here.
> To those so-called "IA" people who don't understand that open source software is a key aspect of software development today: welcome to the 21st century, perhaps you'd like to try living here.
For good talent, it's easier just to leave, get paid more, have a better life, than spend your work life arguing with irrational sandbaggers.
The official US DoD policy is very pro the use of open source software. The DoD's official policy on open source software is "Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS)" (2009), available at: http://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/FOSS/2009OSS.p... That policy says: "a. In almost all cases, OSS meets the definition of “commercial computer software” and shall be given appropriate statutory preference in accordance with 10 USC 2377... There are positive aspects of OSS that should be considered when conducting market research on software for DoD use, such as: (i) 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." (Full disclosure: Dan Risacher is the point-of-contact and lead author of this policy, but I helped write the policy.)
There's also a "Military Open Source Software" (MIL-OSS) group, which is an informal group that discusses these things and works out solutions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mil-oss http://mil-oss.org/
The claims that "Open Source is bad because anyone can put anything in it" is ridiculous. Anyone can edit proprietary software, too - just use a hex editor. The issue isn't whether it's technically possible to edit software (it always is), the issue is who has control over the supply chain. In both proprietary and open source software, there are only a limited number of people who have the privilege to determine what is accepted into the software. In addition, in almost all OSS you have a public record of who made what change (and what the change was), and everyone can see the result.
"We'd rather have someone to call" is completely legitimate. So, go hire someone. There are a lot of organizations who would be happy to take money in exchange for a person to call. It's how many companies make their living. This shift happened in the early 2000s.
To those so-called "IA" people who don't understand that open source software is a key aspect of software development today: welcome to the 21st century, perhaps you'd like to try living here.