DISA finds widespread open-source use in DoD

“Use of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense,” released Oct. 28 by Mitre Corp., Bedford, Mass., identified more than 115 open-source programs being used in 251 tasks. [...]

“The actual levels of DoD use of such ubiquitous applications is likely to be hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of time larger than the number of examples identified in the brief survey,” the report said.

Freely available programs such as the Perl programming language, the GNU/Linux operating systems and Sendmail were particularly prevalent, the report said.
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The report concludes that open source software “plays a more critical role in the [Defense Department] than has generally been recognized,” particularly in the areas of infrastructure support, software development, security and research.
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The Mitre report concluded that a hypothetical ban on open-source software “would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security-focused [Defense Department] groups to defend against cyberattacks.”

However, it recommended the agency create a “generally recognized as safe” list of proven-safe applications and encourage companies to develop commercial versions of open source software.