John Scott has the latest on the US Navy's use of open source. John tracks the US government's open source policies pretty closely, and is generally the first place to see this kind of information surface. As he notes,The “User Guidance Memorandum” is the first in a series of guidance documents to be developed by the DON to address issues regarding “Users” of open source software within all Navy IT systems. Futu John Scott has the latest on the US Navy’s use of open source. John tracks the US government’s open source policies pretty closely, and is generally the first place to see this kind of information surface. As he notes,The “User Guidance Memorandum” is the first in a series of guidance documents to be developed by the DON to address issues regarding “Users” of open source software within all Navy IT systems. Future guidance memorandums will address “development” and “distribution” issues regarding open source within Navy IT environments.The memo itself [PDF] is awesome (well, if you’re in the open source camp – it’s not so great news for proprietary laggards):The objective of the Department of Defense (DoD) goal of achieving an interoperable net-centric environment is to improve the warfighter’s effectiveness through seamless access to critical information. A key piece in supporting the DoD goal is the ability to utilize OSS as part of the Department of the Navy’s (DON) Information Technology (IT) portfolio. The DON Chief Information Officer (CIO) recognizes the importance of OSS to the warfighter and the need to leverage its benefits throughout the DON. The misconception that OSS is neither a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) nor government off-the-shelf (GOTS) solution has hindered the DON’s ability to leverage the benefits of OSS methodology. Because of this misconception, OSS has not received equal consideration during the software acquisition process. DON commands will treat OSS as COTS when it meets the definition of a commercial item….This will allow the DON to utilize OSS throughout the enterprise when acquiring capabilities to meet DON business and warfighter requirements.Sometimes it just seems too easy, winning business away from the proprietary vendors. Alfresco and other vendors are having a field day selling into governments around the world. Here in the United States, some of the nation’s most critical infrastructure runs open source: Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, US Army, US Navy, Federal Aviation Administration, etc. The US Navy is in good company on its decision to more proactively consider open source for its IT. Interestingly, it looks to OSI to define what open source means (see the final paragraph). I’ve seen this in a range of government organizations with which Alfresco does business: they actually care that we use an OSI-certified license. Definitions, then, really do matter. Open Source