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FOSS in Government (US and UK)

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OSS
Security
  • Dear The Sun: we need to talk about your understanding of open source

    I want to talk to you about this article, and the claims it makes about open source software. I would have liked to chat to your cited expert, whom you’ve listed only as Neil Doyle. Sadly, the article fails to specify his area of expertise and both messages and emails to author Ryan Sabey asking for further information have gone unanswered. So I’m responding to it here, supported by some brilliant, contactable experts in security and open source.

    After sitting open-mouthed at the misinformation in this article for some time, I began to reach out to fellow tech experts to see if they felt the same. I first contacted Dr. Jessica Barker, the independent cybersecurity authority behind cyber.uk. I asked if she could address the concerns you raised that use of open source software in the public sector would pose security risks.

    [...]

    “The Sun seems to be implying that open source software is more vulnerable to attack than closed source, which is a sweeping misunderstanding that fails to take the complex nature of cybersecurity into account.

    Both open source and closed source software can be vulnerable to exploit, however these vulnerabilities are arguably more likely to be discovered in open source rather than closed source software as more people (including security researchers) are able to look at it. By its nature, it is publicly available and so it’s harder to hide malicious vulnerabilities”.

  • DOD Aims to Make Cybersecurity a Fundamental Part of Its Tech Mission
  • The Department of Software?

    Well-developed software can make or break modern weapons systems. Software problems initially hindered F-35 production, for example. The Department of Defense (DOD) set up a Digital Service team last year to help the military solve its information technology problems. Future work on autonomous systems will heavily rely on software development. Most importantly, the DOD will have to protect its own data. To improve the DOD’s use of software, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) looked at how the Pentagon could better use “open source software.” While the DOD uses some open source software, its full utilization for military software development will require deeper changes to how the DOD approaches code.

  • John Weathersby: Selling Open Source to the Federal Government

    John Weathersby founded and ran the Open Source Software Institute to “promote the development and implementation of open source software solutions within U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies.” A worthy goal!

    But why stick to nothing but software? In 2014, Weathersby founded The Open Technology Center at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center (in Mississippi), which is a “non-profit research and development entity sponsored by the Mississippi National Guard and U.S. Department of Homeland Security whose mission is to innovate and integrate open source software technologies for use within national defense and security organizations.”

    The OTC is doing some neat stuff, ranging from autonomous vehicles to making it easier for local governments to request, receive, and account for disaster recovery funds in the wake of an emergency. It’s all good! And it’s all about open source, which is why it’s worth listening to what Weathersby has to say.

More in Tux Machines

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Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

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today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.