Open Source

The Defense Department announced this week that it plans to host "a public meeting to initiate a dialogue with industry regarding the use of open-source software in DOD contracts." The meeting is set for Jan. 12, 2012.

In a Dec. 5 Federal Register notice, the Pentagon states:

DOD is interested in obtaining input from the public with regard to the risks to the contractors and the Government associated with using open source software on DOD contracts in the following areas:

What are the risks that open source software may include proprietary or copyrighted material incorporated into the open source software without the authorization of the actual author, thereby exposing the Government and contractors who use or deliver the open source software to potential copyright infringement liability?

Are contractors facing performance and warranty deficiencies to the extent that the open source software does not meet contract requirements, and the open source software license leaves the contractors without recourse?

To what extent should the DFARS be revised to specify clearly the rights the Government obtains when a contractor acquires open source software for the Government, and why?

In August, InsideDefense.com reported that the office of the director of national intelligence had launched a new research project to boost the intel community's ability to anticipate everything from political crises to resource shortages by developing new tools that fuse data from a wide range of open sources, including issues trending on Twitter, Internet search engines and the financial markets. Further:

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) last week initiated the Open Source Indicators program, publishing a broad agency announcement on Aug. 23 soliciting “innovative research proposals” from industry and academia for technologies powerful enough to anticipate events before the media reports them.

"OSI’s methods, if proven successful, could provide early warnings of emerging events around the world," Jason Matheny, OSI program manager at IARPA, said in an Aug. 24 statement.

Changes in communication, consumption and movement can precede -- as well as follow -- "significant societal" events, according to the announcement. Such shifts can be indirectly observed in publicly available sources such as Internet search engine queries, blogs, micro-blogs, Wikipedia edits, financial markets and even traffic webcams, the BAA states.

"Published research has found that some of these data sources are individually useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks, political crises, and macroeconomic trends," according to the announcement.

The Open Source Indicators program will be focused on the development of methods for "continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data in order to anticipate and/or detect significant societal events, such as political crises, humanitarian crises, mass violence, riots, mass migrations, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and responses to natural disasters."

At its core, the research program is geared toward specific technical challenges, including how to identify a change in population behavior from public data; developing new data extraction processes; and utilizing statistical analysis to connect the dots between data that generate an event warning.

The program will focus on Latin America, excluding the Caribbean, an area that includes 21 nations, has "abundant publicly available data" and "timely reporting of events."