powdermonkey

Software is a renewable resource

especially open source software, use of it does not diminish it's value

DOD report urges adoption of open technology

Sharing code and standards could speed development and lower software costs
by Wade-Hahn Chan, 
The Defense Department should adopt an open-technology model for software procurement and distribution, according to a new report prepared for Sue Payton, deputy undersecretary of Defense for Advanced Systems and Concepts (AS&C).

That report, the Open Technology Development (OTD) road map, states that collaborative software development would save money and give DOD greater systems development and acquisition flexibility.

“We need to get things out to the warfighter faster,” said John Scott, co-author of the OTD report and an open-source development consultant for AS&C. “Ultimately, you’re fighting wars, your enemies are changing rapidly, so we should be trying to change our model for how we’re buying and developing technology.”

DISA CTO on Open Source

A Chat with David M. Mihelcic, CTO at DISA

Mihelcic is also helping lead an in-depth exploration of open-source software. He views it as a way to accelerate software development while cutting reuse costs and leveling the playing field among industry partners—big and small.

DEFENSE SYSTEMS: What’s driving DISA’s move to open-source software? How will you ensure security is built into the products?

MIHELCIC: I believe open-source software is a tsunami that will overtake software globally. Driving it is the Linux operating system, as well as the fact that open-source software has really been at the heart of the Internet since the beginning. Things like the Domain Name System server software—the Internet itself would not run without that piece of open-source software.

So when you type www.disa.mil into your Web browser, DNS automatically provides your computer with the most up-to-date IP address of the server that has the Web page you need. Without DNS, the Internet would not operate. Without the Berkeley Internet Name Domain, there would be no DNS.

Moving forward, my goal is for us to embrace open-source in our development. We will require our vendors to take all of the software they develop for us and place it in an open-source license so it will be available to everyone over time. Currently, if you’re a small company, it’s difficult to crack the marketplace because someone else owns the software and you can’t get access to it.

Open-source is going to be a model moving forward because it’s going to help accelerate the development of software and it will help us with software reuse in the DOD. With open-source, it’s easy to share and reuse software.

In some ways, open-source will enable us to enhance the security of software. With proprietary software, we have no insight as to how that software is built. With open-source, you can see the code. We’ll have complete visibility into the development process.

Need to bring the Market into Software Development

software development:
- (in the government) needs to be more like a marketplace less like an assembly line.
- never has an end state, which is what out system is setup to acquire. It is alwasy changing, due to mision needs, resource, hardware base, etc.
- need to be more bottom up

Open Data

I'm at OSCON06, where Tim O'Reilly has been talking about the concept of open data, which is much easier to explain versus open standards and interfaces. You should be able to use an application (open or proprietary) and pull you data out and walk away. Now a number of vendors like to lock their customers into their products so that the switching costs are very high.
But I think that if you really tried to implement open data some customers would be more willing to buy a proprietary product if they know they can walk way at any point.

sloppy web

sloppy web
def: being able to enter information in a messy way in the internet, assuming that ater you (or a machine) can fix it
- fits well with web2.0 arch

OSCON news feeds

take a look, interesting articles:
OSCON2006 newfeeds

Asymmetric Competition

via Tim O'Reilly
"competing with different business models" complimented by the open source software, see O'rielly Radar interesting to apply it to the new and developing companies of Web2.0.

DabbleDB and open data

from OSCON 2006:
focus on Open Data and manipulation of data from and into various formats:
very, very cool
DabbleDB

Conference: Open Source, New DoD Paradigm or Business as Usual?

you should attend this conference:

Open Source, New DoD Paradigm, or Business as Usual?

September 14 , 2006

Hyatt Hotel

2799 Jeff Davis Highway

Arlington, VA 22202