Open-Source Fight Flares At Pentagon
Microsoft Lobbies Hard Against Free Software
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60050-2002May22.html
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 23, 2002; Page E01
Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its
growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to
proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant,
according to officials familiar with the campaign.
In what one military source called a barrage of contacts with
officials at the Defense Information Systems Agency and the office of
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the past few months, the
company said open source software threatens security and its
intellectual property.
But the effort may have backfired. A May 10 report prepared for the
Defense Department concluded that open source often results in more
secure, less expensive applications and that, if anything, its use
should be expanded.
Banning open source would have immediate, broad, and strongly
negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security-focused
DOD groups to protect themselves against cyberattacks, said the
report, by Mitre Corp.
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Microsoft also said open-source software is inherently less secure
because the code is available for the world to examine for flaws,
making it possible for hackers or criminals to exploit
them. Proprietary software, the company argued, is more secure because
of its closed nature.
A master of the security half-truth chimes in...
I've never seen a systematic study that showed open source to be more
secure, said Dorothy Denning, a professor of computer science at
Georgetown University who specializes in information warfare.
John Stenbit, an assistant secretary of defense and the Defense
Department's chief information officer, said Microsoft has said using
free software with commercial software might violate the
intellectual-property rights of companies such as Microsoft. Stenbit
said the issue is legally murky.
much deleted
Stenbit said the debate is academic and that what matters is how
secure a given piece of software is. To that end, the Defense
Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not
undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of
any open-source software that has been tested.
This should present no problem for open source software. No purchase takes
place since the software is free by definition.
steve
