High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Use of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) in the U.S. Department of Defense is a 2003 report by The MITRE Corporation that documented widespread use of and reliance on free software (termed "FOSS") within the United States Department of Defense (DoD). The report helped end a debate about whether FOSS should be banned from U.S. DoD systems, and helped redirect the discussion towards the current official U.S. DoD policy of treating FOSS and proprietary software as equals.