If I ever had any questions about how the government can use or demand software with open source licenses, the answer is in this surprisingly readable, unimaginably well-documented manual: Acquiring and Enforcing the Government's Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software Under Department of Defense Contracts: A Practical Handbook for Acquisition Professionals
Tag: far
The Accumulo Challenge, Part II
In Part I, we discussed the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC)'s attempt to hobble the open source Accumulo project in the DOD. They directed the Department's CIO to jump through a number of reporting hoops before Accumulo would be allowed inside the DOD, and directed the Accumulo team to upstream their work into related open source … Continue reading The Accumulo Challenge, Part II
The Accumulo Challenge, Part I
The dozens of software projects launched in the wake of Google's Big Table and Map Reduce papers have changed the way we handle large datasets. Like many organizations, the NSA began experimenting with these "big data" tools and realized that the open source implementations available at the time were not addressing some of their particular needs. They decided to embark … Continue reading The Accumulo Challenge, Part I
GOSCON: Climbing the Mountain
The Government Open Source Conference, masterfully curated by Deb Bryant and the good people at the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, is one of my favorite open source events. Every year, they manage to pull together quality speakers from innovative agencies and projects in a warm, collaborative, and exciting environment. Before the earthquake unpleasantness … Continue reading GOSCON: Climbing the Mountain
DOD Open Technology Development Guide Released!
The DOD's second Open Technology Development Roadmap has been released: "Open Technology Development: Lessons Learned and Best Practices". It's a handbook for using and making open source in the DOD and the US Government, sponsored by the Secretary of Defense. It provides practical advice on policy, procurement, and good community governance, all under a Creative … Continue reading DOD Open Technology Development Guide Released!
Fighting Forks
This is the ignite presentation I gave for the Mil-OSS WG2 conference today. It's a tremendous group of sandal-shod revolutionaries who want to bring open source and the US Department of Defense together. You can sign up for the mailing list here. If you use your imagination and insert a lot of stumbling, fumbling, and … Continue reading Fighting Forks
Open Source Pork
The adorably named "Snort" project has been the mainstay of open source intrusion detection systems for as long as I can remember. The success of Snort and its commercial wing, SourceFire, is one of the early successes of open source, especially in security. On July 5th, the Open Information Security Foundation, a consortium of companies and … Continue reading Open Source Pork
a technology job is no excuse 