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Linux -- Government Acceptance vs. Actual Use
sdriver writes: "As someone who works in the Space/Science/Military field (as a contractor) I thought I'd share some links to how much Linux really is being used. This one is the U.S. Military using Linux. This is another. This one is about realtime Linux stuff for the U.S. Military. Then there are some general arguments about Open source here and here. For those of us who have hardcopies of this magazine will notice most advertisments feature Linux along with VxWorks as a typical target platform. Not the "other" guys."
It's no surprise or secret that for all its tripwire maze of requirements, the U.S. government uses plenty of Free software already. Still, a re-examination of the POSIX requirement would seem in order. Or perhaps the Feds would like to save money by funding the development of an add-on POSIX implementation layer for Linux -- after all, that sounds "good enough for government work." ;)
Having just quit my job as a defense contractor, the largest problem is getting the local DAA (Designated approval authority, or something like that...) to approve the use of the software. The DAA has the last word on what is and what is not allowed at a site. On some bases, each building has its own DAA, and thus the policy can vary from building to building depending on who the DAA is.
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I had to jump through more hoops just to get Perl installed on a few systems that we were using for development work. These were for systems that were not connected to anything outside of the room that they were in (they were classified, but only at the 'secret' level.
The argument being that all 'freeware' is not permitted by USAF regulations. The problem was that the regulations were talking about binary only distributions, not source code. I had fun pointing out that the main AF Publications web server (the one that holds all of the regulations) was running on apache and linux
I eventually got around the problem by purchasing the O'Reilly Perl resource kit, so it was now 'purchased COTS (commercial, off the shelf)' software, and that is ok. I could sit at home, burn this stuff to CD's and sell it to the government for a ton of money... That was ok, but I could not download it for nothing. Your tax dollars at work.
Like I said, this will vary widely from location to location depending on the local DAA and what they are willing to accept the risk for. Unfortunately, most DAA's are GS-14 or 15 (top of the civil service management ladder) and lifetime civil service employees, and thus do not have much real world experience or knowledge.
But anyway, I'm much happier now as a consultant for internet startups where OpenBSD and OpenSSH are accepted. Now I can do my job and really secure the systems
I've worked for the last year on a DARPA program for wearable situational-awareness computers for the military (the Army, specifically). The system we're designing, while still proof-of-concept, is built around Linux, which was chosen primarily for its openness and flexibility.
Parts of this system, probably significant ones, will make their way into fielded systems in the next ten years. Also, there are a great number of DARPA research programs that involve Linux. In other words, the *future* military systems are being developed *now* under Linux.
It isn't big yet, but I'm willing to wager that because of today's research, the next generation of military software will be Linux based...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Is anybody else tired of hearing this? "Linux isn't right for us, because of all the hackers out there that will crack our machines". I was with them through POSIX, Motif (God knows why), NFS and CDE, but they lost me at posting the source online. As if /usr/src was openly accessible over the network by default.
Isn't part of the Open Source Creed the Right to Fork?
Mebbe someone with better GPL knowledge can say whether or not the DOD would have to release the source if they made modifications to the kernel to make themselves happy.
Or, I suppose, they could go with FreeBSD, and use the BSD license.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Lots of places in the DOE use linux. A lot of that is scientific computing. Look at Avalong and Loki at Los Alamos. Look at Los Lobos at Sandia. Look at all the clusters all over. It's cheap cycles.
I work as a sysadmin at a DOE facility. We recently decided to include Linux on our unix supported system list, set up a program to buy linux boxes, and started getting a lot of interest. For the stuff we do, a $5k linux box will equal the $30-50k suns and sgis. Before you freak and say I am wrong, it works for us. For our applications. Most of our stuff does not have a 64 bit requirement, so that's not an issue. Basically, we just found what we needed to integrate into our environment (shared filesystems, main applications, etc), made sure our config stuff was cross-platform (PERL is the language of the gods), and put it up. We now have guys who can do work on a $10k machine (including a huge monitor) that would normally have required a $80k machine before.
Linux is breaking the paradigm. Scientists jsut like to see the numbers. You say, "Benchmark this box vs your workstations". They are shocked with the results. For the longest time, sgi and sun (and to a lesser extent hp, but I still love PA-RISC) dominated the market for a reason. Then, more recently they dominated the market because of reputation and past.
Face it, it's hard to beat an x86 cluster for computationally bound tasks for the $$. As a desktop, a $5k x86 box is _insanely_ fast. _INSANELY_. Ask any of my scientists that say "Hey, can I borrow your box to run on? It's just faster than this *insert traditional unix box here*".
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I would imagine in places where security is an issue, the government should be looking at BSD first. Not to diss Linux, but OpenBSD is reknowned for it's "security by default" out of the box. If anything, I would think the government would err on the side of security (so their government hire doesn't get the bleeding edge driver or graphics utility, boohoo).
If the gov does use Linux widescale, I would think they should scrutinize all the distros, and come up with one STRONGLY suggested one so all machines will be compatible and fixes can be applied everywhere at once.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well, okay, you can have Motif.
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