Jim Stogdill has written a post on O'Reilly Radar on open source for defense, citing the OCtober 29 AFEI conference.  In the post he mentions the open source software policy memo working its way through the DoD CIO organization.  He says the memo is meant to make it easier for DoD to obtain the benefits that come with open source. 

"In particular, the memo will make it clear that government defense programs should evaluate open source as legally equivalent to commercial off-the-shelf.  It also will clarify policy about participation and contribution back to the community,." Jim says.

Dan Risacher, data strategy lead in the DoD CIO organization, is drafting the policy memo.  Both Jim and Dan are on a panel at the 4th DoD Open Technology Conference on October 29th.

Jim goes on to say in the post "I think open source software is a culture virus that has the potential to carry community, transparency, and collaboration across the government / citizenry boundary - with community participation as the carrier. Further, I’m hopeful that a bye product of that participation will be trust."