Estratégia dos milicos americanos para a adoção do Open Source

O Advanced Systems and Concepts (AS&C) do Departamente de Defesa dos Estados Unidos soltou um roadmap para a modernização dos softwares usados pelos militares americanos para transição para sistemas de código e padrões abertos. O PDF está aqui.

O documento afirma que a adoção de sistemas abertos são uma questão de segurança e interesse nacional para os americanos...

To summarize: OSS and open source development methodologies are important to the National Security and National Interest of the U.S. for the following reasons:

• Enhances agility of IT industries to more rapidly adapt and change to user needed capabilities.
• Strengthens the industrial base by not protecting industry from competition. Makes industry more likely to compete on ideas and execution versus product lock-in.
• Adoption recognizes a change in our position with regard to balance of trade of IT.
• Enables DoD to secure the infrastructure and increase security by understanding what is actually in the source code of software installed in DoD networks.
• Rapidly respond to adversary actions as well as rapid changes in the technology industrial base.

O texto destaca os vários benefícios do uso de softwares e metodologias Open Source. Da agilidade no desenvolvimento, adaptabilidade, qualidade do código e segurança...

...
Can increase code quality and security
With closed source software, it's often difficult to evaluate the quality and security of the code. In addition, closed source software
companies have an incentive to delay announcing security flaws or bugs in their product. Often this means that their customers don't
learn of security flaws until weeks or months after the security exploit was known internally.

Open source software is potentially subject to scrutiny by many eyes
Therefore bugs, security flaws, and poor design cannot hide for long, at least when the software has a community of programmers to support it. And since fixing the code doesn't depend on a single vendor, patches are often distributed much more rapidly than patches to closed source software.

... e afirma que o desenvolvimento com código aberto eventualmente vai prevalecer sobre os métodos proprietários...

The open source development process will eventually become the most successful due to its advantages of openness and the free exchange of ideas, and the steady accumulation of program source code available to all. The open source development method will overtake competing software development methods to achieve this status by consistently delivering better results. While we now glimpse the compelling nature of this promise, this has not always been the case throughout much of the IT industry's history.

Além disso, o roadmap destaca a necessidade de mudança na mentalidade corporativa do povo do Pentágono como o principal obstáculo à transição

Ou seja, para variar, a burocracia é um obstáculo para o desenvolvimento... ninguém quer largar o osso, não importa se a organização é pública ou privada...

The primary challenges to this transition will be cultural, not technical. Over time, government acquisitions and development processes have built a bureaucracy and rewards system that encourages and supports the status quo. Careers are advanced primarily on program size, not necessarily overall efficiency. Furthermore, government contractors are measured by revenue; government program managers are measured by the size of their organization and their overall budget. The canonical government contracting process creates high entry costs for small innovative companies — the established contractors attempt to control their positions through proprietary implementations and interfaces. The system is very good at protecting itself — new approaches, such as OTD, will have to endure legal, security, and process challenges. The current infrastructure will attempt to delay change, claim they are adapting by trying to assume control of the innovative process.

Pessoalmente, tô com sentimentos ambiguos a respeito. Do lado positivo, é um endorso de peso para o Open Source.

Há um potencial de investimentos enorme e ninguém mais vai poder dizer tb que o código aberto é "coisa de comunista"... ;)

Por outro lado, o Open Source vai ser usado para tornar ainda mais eficiente a já hegemônica máquina de guerra americana...

De qq modo, se vc está com dificuldade para convencer os suits crentes nas falácias e meias verdades propagadas pelos deptos de mkt do monopólio do software proprietário, o documento dos milicos americanos certamente será útil.

Veja tb a discussão no Slashdot e esta nota no businessreviewonline.com.