Government agencies need not make their code available to the public in order to enjoy the benefits of the open source model, said a senior intelligence community technology official.

Alex Voultepsis, chief technology officer of the intelligence community chief information officer's I2E/Intelink organization, spoke Aug. 31 at a military open source software conference in Atlanta.

"If it's open and it's transparent and you're not locked into a proprietary vendor as opposed to open technology, it's goodness all around," he said. Voultepsis is a proponent of "government open source software" which opens up software code but restricts its distribution to qualified government and support contractor personnel.

He cited as a possible model the intelligence community's Ozone Widget Framework, a presentation-tier solution for lightweight web applications that transitioned from a National Security Agency government-off-the-shelf software package to government open source software in the summer of 2010.

NSA had made the application available to the wider intelligence community before it was government open source, says an Office of the Director of National Intelligence government open source handbook dated June 29. OWF makes heavy use of JavaScript and its client-side code is exposed. As a result, software teams in other agencies began extending client-side capabilities on their own--but every time NSA released a new version, they would have to reapply or possibly rewrite their changes.

OWF developers were not aware of other agency software changes, and they were not even aware of NSA's OWF changes until the software was distributed, the handbook states, leading the Defense Department office of the chief information officer to formally request that NSA release the full code.

Now, OWF changes are pushed out on a quarterly cycle and governed by an advisory board that votes on proposed functionality. One of the first changes to be incorporated into the OWF baseline was a CIA-developed drag-and-drop capability, Voultepsis said.

The advisory board might smack of bureaucracy, Voultepsis allowed, but "you need some governance--who's going first, who's going second...If not, you'll break down into chaos and you'll live up to the naysayers' expectations."

However, the board's charter includes a stipulation that if the board becomes a hindrance, it will dissolve, he said.

Open source opponents often cite a lack of contractor support as a reason against its widespread use, an argument that Voultepsis said discounts the existence of the government open source community itself.

"There's thousands of people supporting you. You don't have the seven person help desk at the 30,000 person organization that submits help ticks and has no clue. You've got passionate guys all over the world that are supporting you," he said.

An application that lacks cross-agency demand might not be a good candidate for conversion to government open source, he added. "If it's something mission-specific that only makes sense in your space, it doesn't make sense."

During a discussion, Dan Risacher, a policy analyst within the DoD OCIO, said that the DoD 5000 acquisition process directive doesn't necessarily apply to open source software. Open source can be considered government-furnished equipment, with enhancements paid for through research development test & evaluation or operations and maintenance rather than procurement dollars, he said.

"If there's anybody from AT&L in the room, I'll probably get shot on my way out," Risacher added.

For more:
- watch a webcast of Voultepsis's presentation on UStream

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