Welcome to Mil-OSS!

Welcome to the Mil-OSS website https://mil-oss.dev. This site is for discussing the relationship of open source software (OSS) and the military. We focus on the U.S. military, the US Department of Defense (DoD).

Please join the Mil-OSS mailing list!

Also see the GitHub Mil-OSS projects site, where various projects are available.

Key materials

Software Development and Open Source Software (2022-01-24) - the key DoD-wide policy on OSS. This supercedes Clarifying Guidance Regarding Open Source Software (OSS) (2009) (local copy).
DoD Open Source Software (OSS) FAQ
Open Technology Development: Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Military Software by John Scott, David A. Wheeler, Mark Lucas, and J.C. Herz (2011-05-16) (local copy) - various lessons learned
Open Source Software is Commercial by David A. Wheeler - a more detailed explanation of why OSS is commercial under US law and regulation, and why that’s important

Code.gov is the “federal government’s platform for sharing America’s open source software”
Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) (Linux Foundation), a group focused on advancing open source software security. It’s not a military group, but securing software is obviously important to its users.
OpenSSF Best Practices Badge Program (Linux Foundation) - a set of OSS best practices and projects which meet them

What happened to mil-oss.org?

At one time we (the original Mil-OSS group) were hosted on mil-oss.org, but that domain was accidentally allowed to lapse and picked up by someone else. As of May 2023 we’ve regained control over mil-oss.org. We are very sorry for the inconvenience. At the moment we primarily refer to mil-oss.dev.

Modifying the site

If something needs to be added to this site, please help us! See the Instructions on modifying this site on how to create proposed modifications. Basically, create GitHub pull requests.

Unless otherwise noted the contents of this website are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY-4.0) license.