I’d like to start a discussion about the use, adoption, contribution, and creation of open-source software at the relevant branches of the US Department of Defense.
Clearly open-source provides great value to DoD in the same way it does for commercial entities:
- Can be high quality for low cost
- Broader contributions from domain experts
- Reduced vendor lock
However, these come at some risks:
- supply chain attacks / bad actors
- reliability concerns
- licensing restrictions
If you work with or for the DoD, what other concerns do you have, or what additional value do you see in open-source and how could the open/public community make it easier for the DoD to use and contribute back to open-source?
One starting point for discussion is this memorandum:
https://dodcio.defense.gov/portals/0/documents/library/softwaredev-opensource.pdf