Defense Department Deputy Chief Information Officer David Wennergren on Tuesday issued the Pentagon's much-anticipated memorandum clarifying the use and development of open source software. The memo dated Oct. 16 notes that there are many open source programs in operational use by the department today, in both classified and unclassified environments, but there have been misconceptions and misinterpretations of the existing laws, policies and regulations that deal with the technology. Read the memo here (PDF).

There has been significant recent momentum for the increased adoption of open source solutions in the federal government, and the memo from DoD represents "a major tipping point," said David Thomas, principal at Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti and spokesman for Open Source for America. He said his group hopes Wennergren's action will help break down roadblocks for open source adoption in defense agencies and increase the DoD's contribution back to the open source community.

OSA's members include a range of interests including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Google, Mozilla Foundation, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and others. The group is dedicated to highlighting the many advantages open source -- particularly for government -- including security, lower total cost of ownership, rapid innovation, faster deployment and lack of vendor lock-in. In related news, the White House Web site recently switched to an open source code.