The US Department of Defense wants you to contribute unclassified code to software projects developed in support of national security. Toward that end, it has launched Code.mil, which points to a Github repository intended to offer public access to code financed by public money. But at the moment, the DoD's repo lacks any actual code.
Open source and free software represent industry best practices, the DoD said in a statement, even as it acknowledged the agency has yet to widely adopt it. Code.mil represents an attempt to change that dynamic. On the project website, the DoD goes so far as to suggest that anything other than open source software puts lives at risk.
"US military members and their families make significant sacrifices to protect our country," the agency explains in its FAQs. "Their lives should not be negatively impacted by outdated tools and software development practices that lag far behind private sector standards." And in case that isn't clear enough, the agency states, "Modern software is open sourced software."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @03:43PM
i rarely say that, but i am glad someone gets it. next step? make it illegal to pay for closed source software with tax dollars (after a reasonable grace period) and start getting projects ramped up now. Get sister initiatives set up in other countries. FOSS gov software may even be helpful to their respective economies as private companies can use in production or as base for their own projects. good luck.