Very cool the DACS: SoftwareTech New issue is out: DoD Software Tech News (June 2007 - Vol 10 No 2) which features "all things Open Source" within DoD.
Articles and case studies include:
COTR Warriors: Open Technologies and the Business of War
by J.C. Herz and John Scott
Open Source Software (OSS) in U.S. Government Acquisitions
by David Wheeler, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)
Keeping Software Secure in a Networked World
by Terry Bollinger, MITRE
Open Source Software and the Long Road to Sustainability within U.S. DoD IT Systems
by John M. Weathersby, Open Source Software Institute
Evaluating Open Source Products: The Open Source Maturity Model
by Bernard Golden, Navica
Case Study 1: Geospatial Open Source Software
by Mark Lucas, RadiantBlue Technologies
Case Study 2: Federally Funded Software Reuse Optimized Via Open Source Licensing
by Peter Gallagher, Development InfoStructure (DevIS)
Case Study 3: Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Governments
by Matt Asay, Alfresco
Case Study 4: Low Barrier to Entry, No Upfront Costs, High Reliability
by Andrew Gordon, Unisys Federal Systems
The DoD Software Tech News is published quarterly by the Data & Analysis Center for Software (DACS). The DACS is a DoD sponsored Information Analysis Center (IAC), administratively managed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) under the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The DACS is technically managed by Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome, NY and operated by ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences Division.
John (and JC), Nice piece on COTR Warriors. To extend on your phrase... Amateurs talk technology. Professionals talk acquisitions. And practitioners talk details and incentives.
You ask the question "Can code developed on the government dime be leveraged across programs?" I'd say the answer today is "only with great difficulty."
The problem in my view, despite the positive experience with SHARE, is that government purpose license rights just don't work. Forcing a contractor to be on contract before it can get access to code makes it mostly useless. Plus, government purpose rights are easily subverted.
In our company we have recently leveraged our rights to open source code to java.net because, among other reasons, it greatly simplifies moving code among contracts that are related technically but not programmatically. It was taking months to get permission under GPR to move the code between contracts. As open source it can be evaluated like COTS and quickly leveraged.
Back to incentives. There are obvious market-share-oriented incentives for companies like SUN to contribute to or participate in open source community. Once defense contractors see their market share increase because they chose the open route, the same thing will happen. In the meantime they will find ways to subvert the intent of open technology initiatives to their benefit.
Posted by: Jim S. | June 25, 2007 at 15:45