The motto seems to be: "Open Source is BAD! How are we going the get support?! Let's just buy a product or solution from a vendor" Even though they have people/teams who were hired as developers. I have so many horror stories, it's not even funny.
how each branch is implementing tech commands is fascinating.
- DDS in general seems like a great program.
- KR dudes are great and will probably unfuck the AF's tech if they have enough wiggle room and command support against Lockheed and co. Hiring at GS-12s, few weeks approval, quick clearances, other unheard of comp strategies to get good civ talent.
- Army futures command is ..... near retired E9s and O6s in cargo shorts and underarmour polos, hiding out in the Austin Wework
Sadly it's hard to argue the effect that KR is having is "positive".
KR stood up by working closely with Pivotal who supplied both the Pivots to pair program with the comparatively inexperienced AF devs as well as the deployment platform.
While the means are debatable, the ends that Units supplying devs to KR had to face we're not. Those Units got back programmers completely reliant on Pivotal Cloud Foundary. You would get devs that had no concept of what happens to their code after they run `cf push` and the Units had to face the reality that their devs were ineffective without PCF which costed 10's of millions to purchase and maintain by a team of Pivotal engineers.
Obviously Pivotal is a company that exists to make profit but smaller units that supplied devs to KR largely felt taken advantage of. And after that you had things like SpaceCamp, LevelUp, Platform1, that are very similar to KR just without the heavy reliance on Pivotal or their products popping up left and right.
Now that it's gone on for so long even leadership in KR is getting pressured to actually produce a product ready app for all the money that's been dumped. They have plenty of MVP's but afaik nothing to big AF's satisfaction.
At least from a lowly enlisted programmers perspective you can live in Boston in civilian clothes for 6 months.
While we do have spring applications running on PCF, we have a significant and growing number of services and applications that are not built on PCF and PCF isn't required to build a production application and be CATO compliant. In fact almost all of the applications and services in my branch are not.
> The motto seems to be: "Open Source is BAD! How are we going the get support?! Let's just buy a product or solution from a vendor"
Not really accurate anymore. Maybe it was true a decade ago but when I worked in the DoD space almost every single project was attempting to use ONLY FOSS where possible and to try and move off of companies proprietary stuff.
Unfortunately most of the projects I've seen ended up failing and Palantir usually sweeps in and gets a contract because the users really like it.
There is a huge want inside of the DoD for FOSS, it's just mortally wounded by others who want systems like Palantir or through simple incompetence.
Maybe from your experience with one agency/department but the DoD is a BIG organization. But it's still a thing in most federal agencies. Some not as bad as the others.
Oh for sure! When I worked as a contractor I worked with many departments but even the groups I worked with didn't represent the entire department they were in. But it was a very common theme with every single one that I worked with.
I'd love to see some data on FOSS usage across the DoD but that type of audit is likely impossible.
Most of what's used in enterprise are used, so no examples really needed. Upstream activity tends to be minimal, but it happens, usually indirectly via contractors. There are many stories online that can be found by searching, in regards to specific systems, and some software.
There are also various parties working hard to promote more OSS use in DoD, two examples: GAO, OSSI. Not to mention the DoD is mandated to release at least twenty percent of its own custom software as open source. Like anything gov, it's a slow process.
The Tactical Service Oriented Architecture[1] has a Battle Command Display module that is built on top of Liferay[2]. There's other C2 systems that use Cesium[3]. I don't think the TSOA devs are pushing their code upstream, but that's just a guess.
With the exception of:
18F https://18f.gsa.gov/
USDS https://www.usds.gov/
The motto seems to be: "Open Source is BAD! How are we going the get support?! Let's just buy a product or solution from a vendor" Even though they have people/teams who were hired as developers. I have so many horror stories, it's not even funny.