A lot of government stuff requires that they have complete provenance of all code in the system. When you have people contributing to it from different places - potentially different countries - they get nervous about it.
You’d think they’d also be worried about most proprietary software being a black box when it comes to their code. But it could be only a secondary concern
We were restricted even on some proprietary software (especially if it was from a foreign owned company), but you’d be surprised how much scrutiny some of the major packages have had.
Where I worked, many of the contacts specifically said we could not use open source software, so no, it is not always available.
Why did the contracts specify that?
A lot of government stuff requires that they have complete provenance of all code in the system. When you have people contributing to it from different places - potentially different countries - they get nervous about it.
You’d think they’d also be worried about most proprietary software being a black box when it comes to their code. But it could be only a secondary concern
We were restricted even on some proprietary software (especially if it was from a foreign owned company), but you’d be surprised how much scrutiny some of the major packages have had.