The U.S. military is no laggard when it comes to open-source software adoption, but apparently thinks it can do better. The U.S. Department of Defense on Tuesday issued new guidelines designed to remove roadblocks to open-source adoption, arguing that open source can help the Defense Department "anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements."
And to think open-source software like Linux used to be considered a threat to secure Defense Department systems.
While Department of Defense CIO David Wennergren's revised guidance (PDF) is not intended to create new policy, it does provide clarity that suggests open source is very welcome at the Defense Department.
Apparently, the Defense Department's guidance on open source, issued in 2003, wasn't resulting in as much uptake as the CIO desired.
Hence, the new guidance specifies that open-source software meets internal purchasing requirements for "commercial computer software," and as such gets statutory preference in purchasing decisions, just like software from Oracle, Microsoft, or others.
But the guidance goes beyond neutrality to suggest reasons that open-source software might be better than such alternatives, including:
- 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.
- The unrestricted ability to modify software source code enables the Department to respond more rapidly to changing situations, missions, and future threats.
- Reliance on a particular software developer or vendor due to proprietary restrictions may be reduced by the use of OSS, which can be operated and maintained by multiple vendors, thus reducing barriers to entry and exit....
- Since OSS typically does not have a per-seat licensing cost, it can provide a cost advantage in situations where many copies of the software may be required, and can mitigate risk of cost growth due to licensing in situations where the total number of users may not be known in advance...
- OSS is particularly suitable for rapid prototyping and experimentation, where the ability to "test drive" the software with minimal costs and administrative delays can be important.
Ultimately, the Defense Department CIO leaves it to individuals to determine which software best meets Defense Department requirements in a given scenario, but the memo hardly reads like neutral guidance. This is consistent with a wise policy of preferences, not mandates, for open source.
It's also an indication of much more Defense Department open-source adoption to come.
(As an aside, special thanks to John Scott for alerting me to this news, and for his work with the Defense Department to help this happen.)
There's a lot of buzz today on the Obama Administration's decision to run WhiteHouse.gov on Drupal, the popular open-source Web publishing system. Given the U.S. federal government's widespread adoption of open source, however, the amazing thing is that it took so long.
It is now, anyway. This is a big shift in the federal attitude toward open source.
Back in 2004, I worked in the Linux Business Office at Novell and met with the CIO for the U.S. Senate. He knew about open source and admitted that other departments were dipping their toes in it, but the Senate was a decidedly Microsoft shop and had no plans to change.
While I don't have an update on the U.S. Senate's adoption of open source, the rest of the government seems to have gone far beyond "toe dipping." Open-source adoption throughout the U.S. federal government is rampant, and started long before President Obama took office.
NASA's Nebula platform is just one example of how the government is actively using open-source technologies (like Apache SOLR, RabbitMQ, MySQL, and Eucalyptus), but also contributing back.
Unlike other geographies, which have relied on government mandates and preferences to accelerate open-source uptake, the U.S. government hasn't been the driving force in open-source adoption, or even the primary force. U.S. public and private sectors have been equally enthusiastic about open source.
For example, it's nice that WhiteHouse.gov runs Drupal, but adoption in the private sector by FedEx, Sony Music, and many others precedes President Obama's choice of Drupal.
The open-source train has left the building. Even companies like Qualcomm, the patent powerhouse that has traditionally disdained open source, are making open source a core business strategy. Qualcomm is setting up a subsidiary to focus on mobile open-source platforms.
Yes, pigs can fly.
What's driving this adoption? It's not necessarily open source's price tag. After all, in the short term, open source isn't necessarily less expensive, once you factor in migration costs, retraining, etc. (Note: you'd hit these same costs even if you moved to a different proprietary system.)
Of course, proprietary software is no bargain-basement cost saver, either. Even Windows 7, that no-brainer IT decision in the wake of Vista's pain, could cost enterprises as much as $1,930 per instance, according to Gartner.
No, in my experience, open source is winning converts because it gives CIOs more control of their destiny.
In part such control stems from the nature of competition itself. As open source proves itself a viable contender for CIO dollars and thereby spark price competition, CIOs save, as Novell CMO John Dragoon notes.
But open source's superior value proposition goes deeper. Open source calls into question the highly profitable maintenance fees that Oracle, SAP, and traditional software vendors use to juice their earnings, but which do little to help customers.
In fact, the traditional software economy can be downright hostile to buyers, as Ingres CEO Roger Burkhardt opines.
Open source is different. Because the code is open, open-source vendors are forced to deliver a constant stream of value to justify subscription renewals. ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn captures this well:
When you can see the code you have a different relationship with it. You're no longer asking what it can do. You're asking how you can adapt it to your needs.
With code visibility, you and your vendors become partners in trying to make something work. The vendor can't over-promise, but you can't over-assume either. This may be one of main hidden reasons for IT failure, the two sides of the transaction not being on the same page.
It's not surprising, therefore, that Red Hat continues to be the CIO's darling for lowering costs and delivering value. It's also not surprising that the Obama Administration adopted Drupal for WhiteHouse.gov.
No, what is surprising is that it took so long.
Despite the rise of open source within the federal government, Mozilla's Firefox has yet to gain an official nod from the Department of State, at least according to a recent question-and-answer session that Secretary Hillary Clinton and Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy hosted last week, with an ironic back-and-forth on Firefox kicked off by government employee Jim Finkle:
Finkle: Can you please let the staff use an alternative Web browser called Firefox? I just--(applause)--I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn't use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don't understand why State can't use it. It's a much safer program. Thank you. (Applause.)
Clinton: Well, apparently, there's a lot of support for this suggestion. (Laughter.) I don't know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer? (Laughter.)
Kennedy: The answer is, at the moment, it's an expense question. We can --
Finkle: It's free. (Laughter.)
Kennedy: Nothing is free. (Laughter.) It's a question of the resources to manage multiple systems. It is something we're looking at. And thanks to the secretary, there is a significant increase in the 2010 budget request that's pending for what is called the Capital Investment Fund, by which we fund our information technology operations. With the secretary's continuing pushing, we're hoping to get that increase in the Capital Investment Fund. And with those additional resources, we will be able to add multiple programs to it.
Yes, you're correct; it's free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you're running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the secretary rightly said, out fobs and other devices, you're caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can't do everything at once.
Under Secretary Kennedy makes a good point: deploying Firefox isn't free, in terms of administration. But then, nothing is, including Internet Explorer. The real question is whether Firefox is easier and more cost-effective to support than IE. Mozilla has made some recent moves to make it such. We'll see if the government is listening.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
President Obama has made transparency a hallmark of his presidency, with open source an integral part of this pledge. Obama has also expressed a desire to overhaul the U.S. health care system.
This week those two goals came together this week in Connect, "a(n open-source) gateway between multiple federal organizations and the proposed national health information network," according to Modern Healthcare.
The goal is to reduce the cost and complexity of tying into the U.S. national health information network, with three of the largest federal health care provider organizations, Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, plus the Indian Health Service, each participating in Connect. Connect will "tie together health information exchanges, integrated delivery networks, pharmacies, government health facilities and payors, labs, providers, private payors and other stakeholders into a 'network of networks,'" according to the project site.
Very ambitious, and dearly needed, given the myriad of silo-ed data sources in health care today.
The U.S. federal government has been actively consuming open source for years, but only recently has it actively sought to improve efficiency and lower costs by releasing open-source projects like those housed on the Department of Defense's Forge.mil site.
The times they are a changin'.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
With $20 billion in the bank, one would think that Microsoft could afford to build out its own campus. But in a sign of just how "porky" the U.S. federal stimulus bill has become, the city of Redmond, Wash., will be spending $11 million to build a bridge connecting two areas of Microsoft's Redmond campus, as Bloomberg reports.
That's right. One of the richest companies on the planet is using taxpayer money to fund a bridge that arguably benefits no one except its own employees (and visitors). Company spokesman Lou Gellos told Bloomberg that the 480-foot span "is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole" because a congested bridge nearby is not good for walking or bicycling.
Whether the use of stimulus spending toward corporate infrastructure is proper isn't a question of open source versus proprietary. It's a question of wise stewardship of taxpayer funds. Microsoft isn't short of cash. It can build its own bridge.
Yes, Microsoft will contribute roughly half of the total $36.5 million total building cost, but it seems incredible that the company isn't funding all of it, given its resources--and given that the project helps only Microsoft.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
As the global economy craters, CIOs are looking for ways to do more with less. As Vivek Kundra, the United States' first-ever CIO, suggests, however, this penny-pinching may not benefit frugality's posterchild, Microsoft:
Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed?
While Kundra is outspoken in his praise of Google, it's no secret that the Obama administration also sees open source as a way to boost productivity and lower costs. Indeed, Kundra's quote above could have been pulled from the brochures of just about any commercial open-source vendor's website.
While Kundra's direct spending power may be slight, his influence over $71 billion in federal IT spending may be substantial, as The New York Times suggests.
Granted, open source has already made extensive inroads to federal IT. Kundra's appointment as U.S. CIO, however, opens the door to new competitors--Google and open source among them--even wider. He says he plans to take a pragmatic approach to IT spending, but that's all open source needs to thrive.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Even as open source thrives in the downturn, with many open-source vendors reporting significantly increased interest in open solutions as budgets get slashed, the U.S. federal government has decided to put U.S. taxpayer dollars into play to fund a study of just how much money can be saved by moving to open source.
Rather than a broad-based study, however, Congress approved a measure that will study the viability and financial effects of open-source health IT providers, as noted in the stimulus bill [PDF - see page 488] and reported on Slashdot:
STUDY AND REPORT ON AVAILABILITY OF OPEN SOURCE HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS. --
(A) IN GENERAL.--The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall...conduct a study on--
(i) the current availability of open source health information technology systems to Federal safety net providers (including small, rural providers);
(ii) the total cost of ownership of such systems in comparison to the cost of proprietary commercial products available;
(iii) the ability of such systems to respond to the needs of, and be applied to, various populations (including children and disabled individuals); and
(iv) the capacity of such systems to facilitate interoperability.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services is then to report back by October 1, 2010, with a report detailing its findings and conclusions.
Assuming the report is favorable, I suspect that part of that report will offer a hint as to the role open source could play beyond the healthcare industry. As reported by CNET earlier, President Obama has already asked Sun chairman Scott McNealy to draft a white paper that details the benefits of open source. Between this and the Health and Human Services report, it's very possible that the U.S. federal government will have established IT policies that favor open source.
I've long been a critic of government mandates for open source, in part because open-source adoption within the federal government has been strong in the absence of mandates, but a policy that requires consideration of open source as a way to lower costs and vendor lock-in strikes me as appropriate and a good use of taxpayer funds.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Bill Vass, formerly Sun Microsystems' CIO and now president and COO of Sun Federal, has a bird's eye view of open-source adoption within the U.S. federal government. So when I read Bill waxing rhapsodic about the rapid rise of open source within the Beltway, I've got to cheer:
More and more we are seeing the federal government move towards open source due to its increased security, reduced procurement times, large scalability...reduced cost to the taxpayers, and escape from vendor lock-in.
Open source will just continue to grow as the world moves to open storage (low-cost hardware with open-source storage management software that makes it perform as well as high-cost proprietary storage devices), open network (low-cost hardware with open-source VoIP, routing, and switching software that make it perform as well as high-cost proprietary network devices) and open-source virtualization (xVM and Xen cloud computing without the cost of proprietary virtualization and management software).
We've come a long way, and we still have a ways to go. But Bill is right: the way forward is to continue to offer the enterprise--including federal agencies--increased value for their money. That is a winning strategy in tough economic circumstances.
For the U.S. federal government, it's no longer a question of "if" when it comes to open source, a Federal Computer Week article notes, but "how much" and "which projects."
Government officials who support open source now find they have a new decision to make: whether to use one of the growing number of open-source packages that could handle higher-profile agency operations, such as business intelligence analysis, content management or customer relationship management (CRM), to name a few.
I know from personal experience that there are very few federal organizations that are not already using open-source applications or are evaluating them. Recent survey data suggests that at least 55 percent of U.S. federal agencies are using open source now. I suspect the number is actually much higher. The genie is out of the bottle.
The reason is clear. As the article states, the two primary drivers of open-source adoption are "lower upfront cost and a greater ability to customize." More flexibility. Less cost. It's a perfect combination.
Casey Coleman, chief information officer for the U.S. General Services Administration, said in a speech this week that the GSA heavily relies on open source to drive down costs, increase flexibility of IT dollars, and reduce risk.
The GSA, by the way, is no small fry. It manages more than one-fourth of the federal government's total procurement dollars and influences the management of $500 billion in federal assets.
The agency uses a laundry list of great open-source software--initially for its information systems but also increasingly for transactional mission-critical systems--such as JBoss, Linux (Red Hat), Bugzilla (bug tracking), JUnit (testing), JMeter (Apache performance monitoring tool), Eclipse, KnowledgeTree (content management), and others.
Coleman cited some excellent reasons for deploying open-source software:
By using open source, the agency won't be locked in to using a proprietary software program, at least for the duration of the contract.
Not having sunk costs in a commercial software program also means the agency can move to a new program more quickly should its needs change. The general openness also means the agency could become a collaborator in the further development of the software itself.
"You get much more transparency and interoperability, and that reduces your risk," she said.
When the GSA, the organization that influences the purchasing for the rest of the U.S. federal government, buys heavily into open source, you know it's time for the rest of the government to do so, as well. In fact, it already is--at least, 55 percent of it.
Ms. Coleman, I want my tax dollars to stretch a bit further, though. Please instruct the rest of the government to buy into open source much more actively. Thanks!
