“Open source” is the activity term for using the publicly accessible code, distributed for all to see and read. It’s compared with “closed source” or “proprietary” code, which a business guards closely as a trade secret. Open source, by its creation, is a shared tool, much more like creative commons than copyright. One big power is that, often, the agreements to run open-source software are much more relaxed than those behind the proprietary code, and come without authorizing fees. The license to run a copy of Adobe Photoshop for a year is $348; the similar open-source GNU Image Manipulation Application is free.
We don’t typically think of the Pentagon as an Application-intensive workplace, but we certainly should. The Department of Defense is the world’s comprehensive single employer, and while some of that work is people walking around with rifles and boots, a lot of the work is reports, briefings, data management, and just enduring the massive enterprise. Loading slides in PowerPoint are as much a part of daily service life as loading series into a magazine.
Besides cost, there is two other compelling information for why the military might want to go open source. One is that technology outside the Pentagon simply develops faster than technology within it, and by availing itself to open-source tools, the Pentagon can raise those advances almost as soon as the new code hits the web, without going finished the extra steps of a procurement process.
Open-source software is also more protected than closed-source software, by its very nature: the code is permanently scrutinized by countless users across the planet, and any weaknesses are distributed immediately.
“How would the Trojans have taken if the Horse statue the Greeks gave them was caused by glass and they could see right through it? They would have seen the spiteful implants and removed them before letting the piece into their enterprise,” says Bob Gourley, co-founder of the security consultancy firm Cognitio and former chief technology officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “That is my key attention about open-source software. Everyone can check the code and look for and remove vulnerabilities before they are carried into the enterprise.”
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