> I think DoD needs access to paid, professional developers who can provide those services for FOSS. That could be someone like Red Hat, it could be outside con

> I think DoD needs access to paid, professional developers who can provide those services for FOSS. That could be someone like Red Hat, it could be outside consultants, it could be internal developers, they could hire members of the FOSS community. Also, DoD will need to fork projects when the community is uninterested in a DoD priority. That much is a given, and it was already true today. Even if DoD would do nothing more than contract for outsiders to build its software, the people writing the contracts need to have access to government staff who understand software (i.e. actual developers). > And there's another major problem: Imagine bombs are falling, people are dying, national security priorities are being lost - and the military needs a fix or enhancement now. Submit a bug to bugzilla and wait? Email the dev list? IRC? They need someone to call, who can answer the phone and get things done. I regret to inform you that the military is already used to this taking months and years. The Navy was unable to field a COVID tracking software tool in time for it to matter when the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt got sidelined by COVID, the needed tool ended up being fielded by Defense Digital Service who operate under different authorities. But even if we pretend the wider military could do need this, that's the internal developers you already mentioned (like DDS), or developers already on contract to provide urgent support. But that's separate from FOSS vs. proprietary. If anything, the farther we get into an "everything-as-a-Service" model, the less likely it will be that a company whose product is not open source would be able to meet those kind of urgent timeframes, because making changes willy-nilly to their -aaS product may risk their FedRAMP certification and DISA P-ATO.