Fact Sheet

Profile

Mil-OSS is a grass-roots organization that connects and empowers an active community of both civilian and military developers using, improving, and releasing Open Source Software (OSS) and hardware across the United States Department of Defense (DoD). Most members of Mil-OSS work with the DoD either directly or as contractors, and see their work in open source DoD projects as a patriotic support for our country’s Warfighters. OSS allows the DoD to improve software security, control development costs and increase innovation—all of which benefit the Warfighter.

Mission Statement

Mil-OSS exists to improve technology development and innovation across the DoD by connecting and empowering an active community of patriotic developers and solution providers, improving use of the taxpayers' funds through thorough requirements extraction, wise execution, and increasing the speed new technologies enable the Warfighter by leveraging open source and open technology innovation philosophies.

Goals

• Create new open source solutions that are more effective for the Warfighter
• Increase reuse of code and existing open source projects
• Increase awareness of existing reusable and open source technologies
• Initiate events and opportunities that enable Warfighters to transfer requirements directly to developers
• Educate developers on how to better develop for the Warfighter
• Improve collaboration with allies

Guiding Principles

• We believe that contributing to OSS in the DoD is a patriotic contribution to our national defense.
• We believe that as stewards of taxpayer funds, we are responsible to be efficient, cost-effective and innovative.
• We believe in the innovative power of people, especially in large numbers.
• We believe in finding and meeting challenges—good solutions to real problems will find their needed funding.

Founded

Website

Leadership

• Josh L. Davis
• John Scott
• Heather Burke
• Gunnar Hellekson
• Kane McLean
• Daniel Risacher
• David A. Wheeler
• Michael Howard
• Winston H. Messer

Membership

Mil-OSS is an open community geared toward those who work with/for the United States Department of Defense or any of its Services. We welcome military, civilian government employees and contractors alike. Membership is open and for the forseeable future, there will continue to be no fees associated with membership.

Disclaimer