The Department of Defense (DoD) has launched Forge.mil, a software project management site that will host the military's public open source software projects. Inspired by SourceForge, the new site was created to accelerate development by facilitating broader collaboration between government agencies.

The DoD is a major proponent of the open development model and uses open source software extensively in the field. With the aim of fostering broader military adoption of open source software, the DoD defined an Open Technology Development roadmap in 2006 in collaboration with the Open Source Software Institute. In that report, the DoD discussed a wide range of issues that make open source software desirable for government adoption, including reduced risk of vendor lock-in, increased flexibility, greater interoperability, and reduced IT costs.

Another big step was taken last year when the annual defense budget reauthorization bill encouraged adoption of open source software solutions in several areas, including technology for veterans health services and unmanned aerial vehicles. It marked the first time in history that the National Defense Authorization Act has explicitly articulated a preference for open source software.

The launch of an official open source project hosting site is another very logical step forward for the DoD and it demonstrates the department's commitment to enabling collaborative open development. The source code published on the site is visible to everyone, but only government developers can actually post code on it and commit changes.

Defense Information Systems Agency CTO David Mihelcic announced the new site last week at a meeting of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. Development on the site began in October and the process of bringing it online began last month. The site is currently down due to an unanticipated traffic overload that has followed the launch announcement. The open source software community is clearly a lot more interested in the Web site than the DoD initially expected.

"It is really is SourceForge.net upgraded to meet DOD security requirements," Mihelcic told Federal Computer Week. "The open-source development model works for everybody."

He also described several of the projects that were hosted on the site at launch. One of them, for example, is a modified version of Bastille--a powerful open source hardening tool that is used to automate the process of securing Linux-based computers. Mihelcic expects to see 20 more projects added to the site within the next six months.

The Forge.mil launch is a nice step in the right direction, but there are obviously still kinks in the system that need to be worked out. Scalability is clearly an issue, as evidenced by the site's downtime following the post-launch traffic burst. The Obama administration has shown some interest in expanding open source adoption within the government, so it's possible that we could see other sites like Forge.mil emerge in the future.