Emerging Issues in the Acquisition of Open Source Software Within the US Department of Defense

In the past five or so years, it has become clear that the US Air Force, Army, and Navy have all committed to a strategy of acquiring software-intensive systems that require or utilize an open architecture (OA) and open technology (OT) that may incorporate OSS technology or OSS development processes. There are many perceived benefits and anticipated cost savings associated with an OA strategy. However, the challenge for acquisition program managers is how to realize the savings and benefits through requirements that can be brought into system development practice. As such, the central problem we examine in this paper is to identify principles of software architecture and OSS copyright licenses that facilitate or inhibit the success of an OA strategy when OSS and open APIs are required or otherwise employed. By examining and analyzing this problem, we can begin to identify additional requirements that may be needed to fulfill an OA strategy during program acquisition.
Presented at the Annual Acquisition Research Symposium (5th): Creating Synergy for Informed Change, held in Monterey, CA, on 14-15, 2008. Published in the proceedings of the symposium, p230-245, 2008. Document includes briefing charts in addition to text. The original document contains color images.