WG2: The 2010 Military Open Source Conference
In August of 2010, Mil-OSS hosted its second annual Working Group (WG2). The speakers and topics for the 2010 conference reflected not only applying OSS to current DoD IT challenges, but the hot IT issues DoD faces at large such as Cyber Security, DoD Social Platforms, Cloud Computing, CMS Platforms, and more.
The WG2 speakers included people from government, military and industry. Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder, Jr. (Ret.) delivered a keynote which discussed the challenges of modern loose working structures operating within and against the hierarchical environment of the DoD. Lt. Col. Nate Allen’s keynote discussed the of adoption of gated social networks by the U.S. Army for professional development through the Company Command and Platoon Leader forums as well as the ORION project which brings social workflows to the Army’s senior leaders. H.D. Moore discussed Open Source Cyber Weaponry in his keynote address.
The roster of 45 speakers included government/military employees and contractors from organizations including the DoD, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Red Hat, Georgia Tech Research Institute, BRTRC, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SecureForce, Geocent, IDA, Acquia, QinetiQ, Open Information Security Foundation, DHS, DISA, HHS, among others.
Daniel Risacher, who helped craft the recent OSS guidance from the DoD CIO, discussed the development and impact of the new policy memo and held an open Question and Answer session for the community about it.
Anyone who also attended WG1 (the 2009 Mil-OSS Working Group), could not have escaped noticing how much traction the Open Source community has gained in the DoD within the last twelve months. With the new DoD OSS guidance, the overall community tone has shifted from “can we?” to “the game is afoot!”
Mil-OSS is an active grass-roots organization that connects and empowers an active community of both civilian and military developers using, improving, and releasing Open Source Software and hardware across the United States Department of Defense. Most members of Mil-OSS work with the DoD either directly or as contractors, and see their work in open source DoD projects as a patriotic support for our country’s warfighters. OSS allows the DoD to improve software security, control development costs and increase innovation—all of which benefit the Warfighter.
