The foundation of the arguments is that developing applications based on open source software has hidden cost, mostly in labour.
It also warns that open source software may not scale. “Commercial software companies have developed highly refined methodologies to perform these tasks,” the document suggests. “Don’t underestimate the difficulties associated with testing open source software and incorporating required changes into the main development stream, especially when it comes to testing for robustness and reliability under load”.
Oracle also argues that the DoD need not concern itself with integrating software into the world’s myriad hardware ecosystems, again because it is hard to do and Big Red’s already doing the heavy lifting. Another argument suggests it will be harder to certify open-source-derived projects as secure than it will be to buy a certified app from … guess who … Oracle. Or other software vendors.