The U.S. government and others view open source software—blocks of code that are publicly accessible for anyone to use—as vital in the development of new services, systems and technologies. And the use of open source code has become ubiquitous in the tech sector in recent years, with a report released last year by software firm Synopsys finding that 97% of examined software codebases used open source code.
Allan Friedman, a senior advisor and strategist at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who gave keynote remarks during Tuesday’s event, said the government “is still in the process of organizing and coordinating our strategy” when it comes to open source software. He added that a lot of this ongoing work is being led by the Office of the National Cyber Director, which is pulling together subject matter experts from agencies such as CISA, the Federal Trade Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “make sure we have a big tent.” …
While open source code can provide the building blocks for countries to enhance their own tech sectors and services, the evolving nature of software makes it difficult for government-led policies to establish a direct path forward solely through legislation or regulations. Instead, many of the policies identified in the CSIS report focused on issues surrounding research and development, as well as procurement, in the context of “trying to transition from proprietary software to [open source software].” … Read the full article here.