What would happen if open source software were banned in the Defense Department? A recent study conducted by Mitre Corp. for DOD posed that hypothetical question and found this answer: The department's cybersecurity capabilities would be crippled and other areas would be severely impacted.. . .
What would happen if open source software were banned in the Defense Department? A recent study conducted by Mitre Corp. for DOD posed that hypothetical question and found this answer: The department's cybersecurity capabilities would be crippled and other areas would be severely impacted.

Mitre Corp. was asked to develop a listing of open-source software applications at DOD and to collect representative examples of how those applications are being used. Over a two-week period, an e-mailed survey identified 115 applications and 251 examples of use, and Mitre's report acknowledged that actual use could be "tens of thousands of times larger than the number of examples identified."

To help analyze the data, the hypothetical question was posed: What would happen if open-source software were banned at DOD?

Version 1.2 of the report, "Use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense," was released Sept. 20 to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and found that open-source software applications are most important in infrastructure support, software development, security and research.

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