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NASA Releases Classic Software To Public Domain
xpccx writes in with a bit from NewsBytes, "NASA turned 43 this month and marked the occasion by releasing more than 200 of its scientific and engineering applications for public use. The modular Fortran programs can be modified, compiled and run on most Linux platforms." The software can be found at OpenChannelSoftware.com.
At long last I am ready to prepare my own space mission. I wonder if a whiskey barrel is gonna be air tight after I launch it/me into space with a trebuchet. (It's this sort of unconventional thinking that should get me my job at NASA. Or at least get me put to sleep).
Next they'll be buying NASA.com - my mate is a support geezer and got his manager ringing him saying 'I want to see the mars landings but www.nasa.com has just got breasts all over the place' - oh how we laughed...
Are there other examples of NASA released code?
...a new discovery in the cause of the Apollo 13's malfunction was made when someone noticed hacked code with the comment "3y3 0WnZ j00, N@5@"
The NASA code used on space missions is some of the most throughly debugged anywhere. Can't afford a blue screen of death when lives are actually on the line. Also, you have to be pretty fault tolerant in case cosmic rays or other external phenomena are messing with your data.
Of course the drawback is that most NASA code is too specialized to be of general interest.
It will be interesting to see if the "many-eyes" effect of free software turns up bugs in these programs that have been used for years.
fortran, cause you can send it by email which is pretty hard to do with anthrax.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Hey, if they award you the X-Prize posthumously, be sure to leave at least part of the money to the Free Software Foundation, or some such .org.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
after I launch it/me into space with a trebuchet
Thanks to memepool's links, you can Buy a nice trebuchet for only $89 !!!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Make sure you check the metric to English unit conversions before you use the sofware for anything important.
I think I'll stop here.
readme.txt
==========
To run this code, you will need the following:
* a Fortran compiler
* a space shuttle
--riney
Those who haven't read it yet should read this link where Ron L. Toms launches people with a trebuchet. (You can also find him jumping the grand canyon if you look around.)
(Score yourself two bonus points if you remember this show.)
Less Talk, More Beer.
Only if it is written by civil servants. Most NASA software is written by contractors.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I am president of Open Channel Software. Most of the NASA software we are listing have a fee associated with the software, imposed on us by NASA and an organization called NTTC. We are trying to 'open' the process, at minimum, pushing for free downloads for private individuals. We are also trying to get community activity going around some of the more popular programs.
Most of the software developed for NASA projects these days is open -- at least, the scientific operations and data analysis software. For example, check out the solarsoft distribution of solar physics analysis software, including planning tools for most existing solar instruments. CVS and Sourceforge it ain't -- but you can get your hands on the actual software that is being used in the SOHO, TRACE, Yohkoh, and HESSI missions (and soon STEREO and Solar-B too).
Like oh, say, Slashdot.ORG
What a different world it would be if all tax $ funded software were available like this.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
By Musan S
WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A.,
25 Oct 2001, 11:47 AM CST
Kenme, Government Office of Strange Rumors. NASA turned 43 this month and marked the occasion by releasing more than 200 of its scientific and engineering appliances for use on BattleBots, the robot fighting show on Comedy Central. The outer space-ready booster rockets, thermal shielding equipment and gyroscopes can be modified and pitted against each other or most exisitng BattleBots such as Son of Whyachi and BioHazard. The Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center in Wheeling, W.Va., and BattleBots Inc., a for-profit scrap metal producer, are collecting the "NASA Classics" collection of new BattleBots based on discarded NASA equipment.
The Byrd center has distributed more than 50 NASA technology-based BattleBots created by NASA engineers, said the center's president, Joseph Allen, in a statement. BattleBots now has access to NASA tech and "will help NASA promote the use of Cosmic Ray Shielding, Reagan-era Star Wars laser technology, and Hydrazine-based propellants for the television viewing public's benefit," Allen said.
The classic tech, waiting to be annhilated for over 30 years in showers of sparks and smoke on cable television, served a variety of purposes at NASA. None of which is as interesting as what the twisted minds behind past BattleBots envision. Said Robert Everhart, creator of Atomic Wedgie, "Those NASA engineers are some scary folks. Atomic Wedgie can withstand most onslaughts, such as Diesector's Pick Axe or Minion's Fireman's emergency saw, but a 300 terawatt neodymium laser? Forget about it." Details are sketchy, but one NASA engineer with a giant smirk on his face who spoke on conditions of anonymity identified three NASA tech BattleBots in the works: the "Apollo Lunar Launcher", the "Viking Mission to Hell", and the "Rubble Telescope".
Reported by Bewsnytes.com.
11:47 CST
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Red Hat, certainly. Probably it's easier to make a list of GNU/Linux distributions that don't come with a Fortran compiler, given that:
The GNU Fortran compiler (g77) is a component of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
A free Fortran-to-C convertor tool (f2c), including run-time libraries, is available from netlib, and has been included on some distributions since before g77 was released to the public.
If the Fortran code released by NASA sticks to the FORTRAN 77 standard, it'll likely work "out of the box" on Linux distributions.
(Note that, while installing a distribution like Red Hat, you might have to explicitly select g77 to get it installed...it's not so small that it can be installed without checking with the admin doing the install, I guess.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Cool, I open /. and see NASA software. Click on the link wait for it to load, watching TV while waiting...
After a few seconds I look and the first think I see on the right is, "Crack Growth and Fatigue Analysis"
What does this have to do with uh software, nasa, umm computers?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
We would like to apologize to visitors from Slashdot, along with the rest of our community, for the problems we have experienced with our server this morning. We are in the process of upgrading our server to accommodate the spike in requests. We thank everyone for both their interest, and their patience. For those interested in downloading code from the NASA Classics Collection, you should be aware that we are currently required to charge a fee for the software. We are working with the people from NASA to try to "open" this software to enable downloads without fees, at least for private, non-commercial use.
Just so I don't troll too terribly
Probably the most famous application they are releasing is the NASTRAN (NASa STRuctural ANalysis) System which most of us aerospace types are already using in the industry. They also released some composite and general structural design tools.
They also release numerous 2D and 3D aero flow tools.
The one that caught my eye: SCRAM - An Engineer's Tool for Prediction of Airframe Integrated Scramjet Performance.
The one-I-expected-to-be-there-but-wasn't: Planetary, interplanetary, and/or Mars multiple degree of freedom dynamic simulations. They gotta have a few of those, but apparently none were released.
Religion and science are both 90% crap..but that doesn't negate the other 10%.
OpenChannel Software is SELLING copies of these programs. Don't expect any of them to be free or even cheap.
One projects i was looking at (a compression algorithm comparision program) was about $154 for source.
Sounds like another backroom deal where things get put in the public domain, but one company get control of it.
Blech. And people wonder why no one trusts the government...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Unix source docs: $250
DEC Alpha AXP executable use: $2000 / year
HP9000 HP-UX executable use: $2000 / year
IBM RS/6000 executable use: $2000 / year
DOS/Win3.1/95 executable use: $1000 / year
Sun Solaris 2.x executable use: $2000 / year
DEC ALPHA OSF/1 source access: $7000 / year
SGI IRIX 5.x source access: $7000 / year
Sun Solaris 2.x source access: $7000 / year
Be nice when this code IS actually open source.
See this NTTC press release on this article.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
So I visited the site to look at their AI offerings, and the first interesting package I saw, AUTOCLASS III, costs $900 to download. If that's your idea of public domain, I'll just keep hoping we encounter alien life that uses the GPL.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
MWSG, more whining slashdot geeks. Those free for non-commercial use contracts people use are ridiculous because you all know damn well that it is rare that anyone who uses that software in a corporate fashion pays for the stuff. How many of you have "free for educational or non-commercial use" software on your PCs at work? I bet a good number of you do. If you just want the code to play around with you can find a number of CFD Fortran programs all over the internet. The cost of binaries for these toys is about what you'll pay for FLUENT anyhow. Funny how the same people that complain about NASA messing up mission or needing more money are the same ones bitching that they dare charge money for something they worked on.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.