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US Department of Defense: We love open source lots and lots

The US Army is Red Hat's biggest customer, a fact which is indicative of a much larger trend within government organizations to vote for open source with their pocketbooks.

Matt Asay Contributing Writer
Matt Asay is a veteran technology columnist who has written for CNET, ReadWrite, and other tech media. Asay has also held a variety of executive roles with leading mobile and big data software companies.
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Matt Asay

Dave, who was clearly being held back by me over at Open Sources, the Department of Defense's latest Software Tech News, and highlights some interesting factoids (though he fails to read pages 37-38, which focus on Alfresco ;-):

  • The US Army is the single largest install base for Red Hat Linux
  • Government contractor devIS reports that it "saves its clients a minimum of $100,000 per contract by using OSS."
  • US Government policies mandate that government acquisitions consider OSS approaches.

And now you see why Microsoft and the proprietary rabble-rousers are, well, rousing the rabble. Once open source is the default choice for mission critical operations like Defense, how are the proprietary vendors going to keep FUD'ing that open source is not up to scratch when it comes to security, performance, etc.?

I weep for them.