U.S. Military Adopts More Open Source: Is That Secure Enough For You?

The U.S. military and researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are putting their heads together to help the military adopt more open source software. The military wants in on the cost savings, speed and flexibility which OSS offers to users, as opposed to being stuck waiting on proprietary software vendors to modify their tools when changes are needed. If the open source model can be secured enough for the military, surely it can be secured enough for the enterprise.

Specifically, researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)  are working with the military on a three-pronged plan-of-attack to bringmore open source to DoD developers. First, the GTRI will make more source-code tools and applications "available and practical" for military use. An example of the type of open source software that GTRI is developing is FalconView,an open sourced PC-based mapping application.