Editor's Perspective
Written by Harrison Donnelly
Exciting opportunities for collaboration in software development have opened up for defense users with the Defense Information Systems Agency’s recent launch of Forge.mil (www.disa.mil/forge).
Creating a new approach to delivering and deploying technology within the Department of Defense, Forge.mil enables collaborative software development and cross-program sharing of software, system components and services in support of net-centric operations and warfare.
The declaration of initial operational capability for unclassified use within DoD coincided with release 2 of SoftwareForge, the initial Forge.mil capability, which enables sharing and collaborative development of open source and community source software within the DoD software development community. Building on the best practices and technologies used in the open source community, SoftwareForge delivers a secure and reliable platform that meets DoD’s requirements. This initial release comes after three months of limited operational availability, during which SoftwareForge rapidly grew to more than 1,300 users and 60 development efforts.
For open source and community source software developers, SoftwareForge provides the tools needed for distributed development, including software version control, bug tracking, requirements management and release packaging, along with collaboration tools, such as wikis, discussion forums and document repositories.
Along with DISA’s Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), Forge.mil provides a key component of the agency’s move to provide cloud computing services. Together they provide unique capabilities to accelerate DoD technology development, with RACE providing a rapidly deployable hardware environment and Forge.mil providing the supporting software development environment.
RACE provides Forge.mil users and customers with a secure, flexible and scalable software ecosystem. That, agency officials emphasize, represents the future of the DoD IT infrastructure.
Harrison Donnelly, Editor
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