U.S. Defense Department Cozies Up to Open Source

Yesterday we covered the news of the U.S. government showing a little more love to open source by relaunching Whitehouse.gov as a Drupal site. The move came after recent clamoring for the Obama administration to more aggressively pursue open source initiatives. Now, as matt Asay notes, the U.S. Defense Department has issued new guidelines regarding open source adoption.

From the Defense Department's guidance document:

"To effectively achieve its missions, the Department of Defense must develop and update its software-based capabilities faster than ever, to anticipate new threats and respond to continuously changing requirements. The use of Open Source Software (OSS) can provide advantages in this regard."

You can find the entire guidance document here. In it, there are many indications that the Defense Department likes the idea of "peer review" of code from a reliability and security standpoint. The advantage of "many eyeballs" that open source has from this perspective is often cited.

With several examples of open source initiatives cropping up, it looks like some of the promises the Obama administration made about FOSS are starting to translate into actions. Let's hope for more.