U.S. Department of Defense Details Open Source Lessons Learned

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has issued a major report detailing its lessons learned and best practices for military software use of open technologies.

The 68-page report has the goal of helping the U.S. government to implement what they refer to as open technology development (OTD) for government software projects. As part of OTD, the report includes a number of specific recommendations for open source software usage. Some of those recommendations are somewhat of a surprise, considering that the U.S. military is often seen as an organization that is not likely to be very open about their software development practices.

"The biggest surprise was the focus on the importance of community creating open source project," Gunnar Hellekson Public Sector Chief Technology Strategist at Red Hat told InternetNews.com.

Hellekson is also the co-chair of Open Source for America, a group that got started in 2009. Open Source for America is a group of over 70 open source vendors that have joined together as an advocacy group for the use of open source in the U.S. Government.

Hellekson noted that the new U.S. Government report is a positive step for open source.