Defense launches online software development site

The Defense Information Systems Agency launched a Defense Department Web site on Jan. 23 that programmers already have used to collaborate online for developing open-source software, delivering its first software package this week, DISA's chief technology officer said on Friday.

The collaborative open source software development site, called Forge.mil (although the site has a .com domain), is modeled on the widely used SourceForge open source Web site, which provides Defense software engineers with the environment and tools to create Defense software for engineering applications in weeks, rather than the years it usually takes, David Mihelcic, the agency's CTO, told the monthly meeting of the Washington Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

Forge.mil provides Defense developers with access to both standard software tools as well as tools that can be quickly adapted to meet the particular needs of military systems, such as beefing up security, he said. It includes a Defense version of the open source Bastille server configuration software, called DoD Bastille. Server configuration required establishing network connections, which includes ports, protocols and security settings.

DISA has Security Technical Implementation Guides, which can run hundreds of pages that govern server configuration. For a large server farm, manual configuration is a time-consuming and daunting task. DoD Bastille was developed by DISA intern Aaron Lippold and automates the implementation guides, Mihelcic said. It is available for download from Forge.mil and already has been used by an Army unit in Iraq to automatically configure its servers, he said.