http://www.disa.mil/forge/

What is the Forge.mil Program?
Forge.mil is a DISA (http://www.disa.mil/)-led activity designed to improve the ability of the U.S. Department of Defense to rapidly deliver dependable software, services and systems in support of net-centric operations and warfare. Forge.mil will:


Enable cross-program sharing of software, system components, and services
Promote early and continuous collaboration among all stakeholder (e.g., developers, material providers, testers, operators, and users) throughout the development life-cycle
Rapidly deliver effective and efficient development and test capabilities for DoD technology development efforts
Help protect the operational environment from potentially harmful systems and services
Encourage modularity so that large programs to be developed, fielded, and operated as a set of independent components that can evolve and mature at their own rates
Eliminate duplicative testing and improve dependability by adopting common test and evaluation criteria supported by standard testing tools and methods

The Forge.mil effort started development in October 2008 and the first capability, SoftwareForge, is now available for limited, unclassified use.


What is SoftwareForge?
SoftwareForge is the first component of Forge.mil to be deployed. SoftwareForge enables the collaborative development and distribution of open source software and DoD community source software. For open source and community source development projects within the DoD, SoftwareForge provides software development tools such as software version control, bug tracking, requirements management, and release packaging along with collaboration tools such as wikis, discussion forums, and document repositories to enable collaborative development amongst distributed developers. SoftwareForge is currently built on the open source Subversion version control system and CollabNet SourceForge Enterprise application lifecycle management tool. Forge.mil is currently in beta with limited operational availability. General availability for unclassified use is scheduled for Spring 2009.

I tell ya what. If I had Sancheks knowledge of Internet security I would be pumping for a government DoD contract.

Finally a huge government player stepping into the open source foray.

I am sure there are other initiatives around many governments in the world, but the DoD taking up this task is immense and scores one gigantic check mark for open source.

I am waiting for the day that the Canadian government accepts open source into its fold on a scale "similar" to what the DoD is doing. The amount of money we as Canadian tax payers dole out to MicroSludgeSoft in licensing fees and software purchases is criminial compared to the cost savings of open source.

I am trying to position myself in my market to be a quality supplier of open source solutions. If and when the federal government decides to go down the open source route I will be prepared to catch the wave.

Thanks for the info Fild!


Cheers,

Wouldnt there be some serious software concerns using open source? With proprietary software you get a added fuction of someone trying to access the system has to learn greek for a lack of better term.

Wouldnt there be some serious software concerns using open source? With proprietary software you get a added fuction of someone trying to access the system has to learn greek for a lack of better term.

Yes....I'm not a fan of open source...it's good for somethings...but it lacks coherent support.

Yes....I'm not a fan of open source...it's good for somethings...but it lacks coherent support.
That has been changing over the last few years.

Examples:

- RoR (Ruby on Rails) Community has exploded since 2005
- Python has really gained traction since its one of the main technologies used by Google.
- PHP has been around for ever (in software terms) and now has a slew of frameworks backing it up. Facebook is written using PHP as well as many other high profile apps.

.NET will be on the wane in terms of their market dominance moving forward. It still owns a large chunk of the marketshare but they are on downside of the curve from my vantage point as a web developer.

Of course it will take years for open source technologies to switch out the propriatary MicroSchmultz systems, but its headed in that direction.


Cheers,

Wouldnt there be some serious software concerns using open source? With proprietary software you get a added fuction of someone trying to access the system has to learn greek for a lack of better term.

This is often the opinion of people who have no idea what they're talking about. If you want to understand the issue, which I doubt, you need to look into the development of AES.

(hint: You probably use AES several dozen times a day without ever knowing it)

That has been changing over the last few years.

Examples:

- RoR (Ruby on Rails) Community has exploded since 2005
- Python has really gained traction since its one of the main technologies used by Google.
- PHP has been around for ever (in software terms) and now has a slew of frameworks backing it up. Facebook is written using PHP as well as many other high profile apps.

.NET will be on the wane in terms of their market dominance moving forward. It still owns a large chunk of the marketshare but they are on downside of the curve from my vantage point as a web developer.

Of course it will take years for open source technologies to switch out the propriatary MicroSchmultz systems, but its headed in that direction.

Keep in mind that .NET, while not technically "open source", makes its source available within the debugger. Also, ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET AJAX are under OSI approved open source licenses.

In DevDiv, they actually have a lot of support for open source and transparency. It's just a slow process to steer a ship that big.

Also, ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET AJAX are under OSI approved open source licenses.
True, but I will take it one step further and say that the platforms these run on are not open source, i.e. - op sys, web server, database, etc.

Your still boxed into MicroShaft licensing agreements when you buy into .NET.


Cheers,

Mono is pretty strong these days. MS actually provides Miguel's team with significant support, to help Novell keep it competitive (and Novell supports it now too).

As far as database, you can run SQL Server Express in production now, or just use an open source database. You're not tied to SQL Server unless you want to be.

You're not tied to SQL Server unless you want to be.
I agree, but most Federal departements I have worked with will buy into it since they already have their licensing agreements setup with MS and common sense usually doesn't come into play when you are dealing with Government managers.

The only other database for large Federal systems that they will entertain is Oracle.

There is a spattering of MySQL in our Federal systems but its more like the new MS Access <shudder>.


Cheers,