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Government Funds Secret Sustainable Computing
SEWilco writes "OSDN's NewsForge reports that Carnegie Mellon University has started a Sustainable Computing Consortium to improve the quality and security of software.
The only news release is that NASA gave CMU $23 million to help create dependable software.
SCC members get an internal-use license for SCC software. So taxpayers are paying millions to create proprietary software, and companies get access for a few thousand dollars.
(There is some blurring between CMU's SCC and CMU's High Dependability Computing Consortium, although HDCC's web site has been idle for a year.)"
Here they are telling us they need money, yet the have $23 million to give away?
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Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
... is there something wrong with that?
Ummm.. this is obviously a technology NASA needs and wants developed, for rather obvious reasons: space shuttles and the command stations require dependable computation, people's lives and billions of dollars of research spending going to waste because of failed missions depend on it.
All circuits busy.
there must be many such univs
[ouch!] Hey, relax - it was a joke.
I'll think of a funny sig later on
Non-classified government funded software should be Free for public use, I guess is the point here. Are there any ongoing lobbying efforts to this effect?
Anyone want to drop a peso or two on this effort being based on Windows XP?
The obligatory joke is that to get an order of magnitude improvement, you first need to drop the sustainability for an order of magnitude. I think the reference to Bill Gates on the home page of sustainablecomputing.org is in acknowledgement of his contributions in this area.
I don't understand the title of this article. What's "secret" about this?
Propriatary, yes, and perhaps it's wrong for the gov. to turn our tax money into a Microsoft product (but of course, the government gives billions in tax rebates, subsidised loans, etc. to EVERY american business), but there is definitly nothing secret about this.
Stop the FUD!
That's enough to pay for 4.6 million slashdot subscriptions. In other words, the entire online population of Africa.
>>So taxpayers are paying millions to create proprietary software, and companies get access for a few thousand dollars.
I hope this is not trollish, but there has been a lot of this going around for quite some time; indeed, it's how the world works in the domestic USA. Pharmaceutical (sp?) funding gets Gov. grants for the coarse, laborious, and often empty research, and then hands over any promising results for free to Merck and others for development into actual drugs. Universities do lots of basic research that then, when promising, can be used by manufacturers, and if classified will even be denied to you and I.
Now you can argue that these results help fuel the economy, but you can also argue that the marketplace should be charging for the information developed at the expense of the funders.
Hey, it's only our money. What's on TV?
If the software is written using public funds (i.e. my tax dollars are paying for this), then the resulting software should be publically available. Either under a GPL type license or under a BSD sytle license (with a BSD license, then even companies could incorporate the publically funded technology into their products to sell, sorta giving them something back for their tax dollars). Either way, if we paid [taxes] for it, then it should be available to us.
Maybe we could get a bill passed that states all software not written for national security that is paid for by taxes should be open to the tax payers. Just a thought.
To rehash what appears to be a popular theme around these parts... I just don't see how one can excuse the use of public money for projects that only select private parties can benifit from. Granted, this project is likely to benifit NASA in that it could help them provide better mission-critical systems for the space station, future spacecraft, and so on... but I still feel that taxpayers should not be made to pay to help develop a product that targets them as consumers, a project with a licensing scheme that would make it anything but available to the general taxpaying public.
These are, perhaps, the kinds of things that we need better government accounting regulations to keep track of.
stuff from the FSF is still around in a few decades, and their stuff has been completely rewritten 100 times?
Maybe then they'll realize what sustainable means...
nahh....
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Hey! They funded the Minuteman missile, and didn't even give me the plans so I could build my own! Those're public funds, dammit, and I know they've got extras laying around. I want one!
So NASA needs some Sustainable Computing and they spent $23million of their budget to get it. Where is the problem here?
Is this trying to imply that all NASA software should be free?
Hmmm, didn't Microsoft go on record that they supported taxpayer funded research being freely available provided it would not be encumbered by the GPL?
Or would that just have been a divide and conquer approach to make sure the free software camps keep fighting each other rather than joining forces?
I personally shudder at the thought that taxpayer money should go to subsidizing software hoarding (and that's any taxpayer money, not just US).
Oh well. This won't impact open software one way of the other until patents get thrown into the mix. Closed source has never hurt open source.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Hey, it's NASA sponsored, remember?
Paperwork is probably the number one ingredient.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
I just don't see how one can excuse the use of public money for projects that only select private parties can benifit from.
Any private party can benefit from it, all they have to do is pay $25,000/year. Or were you talking about the SCC as the select private party? Because I would assume they're going to spend all the money they receive from the government and members on the research.
I'm not sure if the SCC is a non-profit, but it certainly should be. If not them maybe you have a point.
So if I looked at a SSC program I'd see lots of:
switch()
{
foo:
}
?
My initial theroy was that it was related to the mother/son conflict manifesting in the moderators.
I recieved a research grant from VA Goatse.cx to study this phenomena, and discovered that it was actually caused by pent-up frustration resulting from the inability to get laid (aka ``blue balls'') causing the poor moderation. Since these moderators can't get any ass, their only satisfaction is in moderating down other posts.
This post also serves as a test case -- watch how fast it gets moderated down!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'll admit that the government funds alot of stuff that goes to good, albeit proprietary use. The entire world isn't open source yet, and I'm not sure it should be. However, it is kind of scary to see the government getting buddy-buddy with corporations over computer security/high availability, _AND_ purposely cutting out individuals.
The parent will probably be modded "Funny", but there is a good source for debate here...
Obviously, there are boundaries to what the public should expect back from its tax dollars at work.
The public would not take kindly to minuteman design plans to be revealed under the Freedom of Information Act (in fact, that act is pretty specific in this respect, but since it was intended to repair the situation where government officials were hiding information the public should have access to, a lot of thought went into defining those boundaries; unlike the more general laws that deal with public use of government sponsored activities).
It would probably be a good thing if the House looked into this whole thing. Yeah, I know. I'll be dressing up warmly just in case hell freezes over.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
So.. everyone is saying that if we are paying for it, we should have access to it. What about those who aren't payingfor it? Should people who are taxpayers in other countries not get access to the work?
Should Russia or China have free access to programs written by NASA? If programs were open sourced just because they are funded by taxpayer money, well, wouldn't that help people we still view as competition in some ways?
Clipped from their Web site:
For more information on the Consortium or membership details please contact us at:
The Sustainable Computing Consortium
Hamburg Hall 1505A
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
We aim to maintain a level of continuity in the quality of reliable computing consortiums in existance today. Gone are the days of having uninformed, outdated consortiums changing their names to reappear in the spotlight. The Sustainable Reliable Computing Consortium Initiative will serve as a watchdog group for reliable computing consortiums of various types.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
We could also use the dual license idea.
Gov't should require (for non-classified material):
GPL it to us for free.
Proprietary license it to the corporations for a fee.
That way the consortium can get funding, corporations can hide away inside their code that reasonable people can use for free, and we reasonable types can get our software we paid for.
And the software will fluorish quite well in the Free software community, improving the software without the gov't spending a dime more in cases where the code is of general utility.
The gov't often wants contractors to take over with SW projects even if they funded the initial development efforts. A company can to sell products if possible, and use proceeds to pay for some of the cost of further development and maintanance, even if the gov't funded a lot of the initial project..
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
CMU is the same school that I had to quit cause they screwed up my financial aid forms; and now sends me alumni beg letters asking for money.
Good education from greedy, greedy bastards.
Part of the Microsoft Method for Making Money (R) (patented), is to ensure software always expires, goes rusty or is made obsolecent. Any attempts to circumvent this process clearly are a breach of the law.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
After reading the somewhat inflamatory article, I'm inspired to consider a counterinitiative. Techniques for building better software(besides the obvious many eyeballs) coming from the open source/free software communities using open methods to improve all software is a very headlinable idea, and think of the PR boost that having developed better methods more quickly or better than a comparable proprietary only solution would bring.
Use Linux. Start with 2.5 if they want, and let the Open Source community help.
Starting with a Microsoft kernel is like climbing Mount Everest by starting in the Marianas Trench, without oxygen.
That is currently reviewing Carnegie Mellon's restricted research policy. I'll bring this up. Just so that you all know, this research must be with one of CMU's "semi-autonomous units," and no students are participating in the research, otherwise it could not have cleared our Provost. At any rate, this is interesting information to have.
Ceci n'est pas un post
But since the US passed the Bayh-Dole act, government funded agencies are free to privatise their discoveries for profit - and in practice, there is a lot of pressure to play the commercialisation game.
So perhaps the right strategy to lobby for is to GPLed the code, with the alternative of paying for a proprietary license, as Trolltech, for example, does with Qt.
This also has the nice property that it debunks all of Microsoft's arguments against the GPL, which claim that the license prevents the transfer of publicly funded technology to the private sector.
Fixing copyright
If you read the actual press release you will get the impression that It's not really a software Development Project at all, its more of an effort to FIGURE OUT the best ways to build Software and Computers for Sustainability.
It will probably end up being a LAB or even a School, at which they work on Sustainability issues. My guess would be that the results/findings will be widely presented and published. I think that resulting SW tools may or may not end up being open-sourced.
The prevailing theme I read in other postings is that people think that anything the Gov't funds, should be open. That idea doesn't hold any water anyplace. Weapons the gov't funds the development of are not open. And I don't want them to be. I don't want the software that runs a weapon to be open either. You can't go buy a missile, and you can't go download the code that runs in a missile, and I like it that way.
Furthermore, the "Open-Source way" kind of breaks down when it comes to obscure problems that only specific groups ( like governments ) need to solve. People need to have something that excites them and interests them about working on some project. At least they need the hardware that it will run on.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Well, it seems to be at least somewhat related to the Software Engineering Institute / CERT, etc. which is fairly separate from the rest of CMU, and a lot more large-software-corporation oriented than many of the research groups are. Of course, one of the nice things about a university is that it can be large enough to support both open communities and proprietary ones. Instead of trying to *fix* this one however, why not just support other open security projects, such as Ballista (which incidentally is also at CMU).
Older folks tend to, from back when it was "Carnegie Institutue of Technology"
I've certainly heard that more often than 'the mellon'--and i went there too.
The fact is that many times government has to 'jump start' technologies. When they do, it usually benefits the whole society. And no, not every project the government funds becomes a roaring success. As long as a fair percentage turn out to be useful the goal is accomplished.
It seems clear that you need to have an interpreted language if your system is to be fault tolerant. Compiled languages such as C, C++ and even Java are compiled. Compilation increases the odds of failure tremendously. It seems only 100% interpreted languages such as lisp can really be trusted. However, no one is willing to put up with a ten times reduction in theoretical speed - and that's why people are willing to tolerate crashes and security breaches. We want our code to be fast first and reliable and secure second.
It really ticks me off when I see people saying that publicly funded code should GPLed.
That is *less* free. The GPL (or any license) *restricts* the use of the code.
Public Domain is the only way to go.
Public domain meaning that anyone and any company can do what ever they want with the code,
including the freedom to not tell anyone that they are using it!
The modifications they make are their own, and they can sell, license, GPL those modifications as they wish.
However, they can't patent the original code, since there is prior art (the Public Domain code).
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
Almost everyone here seems to be taking the proposition "that the public has a right to Govt funded software" as a God-given truth. But it is not.
... unless the law says so. You could argue whether or not it is a good thing or even fundamentally meaningful for IP to be owned. (How can you "own" an idea?) But the law says IP can be owned right now, and that's how the world works.
:-)
In general, you (the tax payer) don't own Gov't assets. You can't go up to an Army base and demand to drive "your" tank. The Gov't owns the assets and manages them on your behalf, in the national interest and according (at least in theory) to the laws of the land.
If you view Gov't funded software (or IP in general) as a pure asset owned by the Gov't, then you (the taxpayer) have no automatic right to see / use it
Why would it be counter-productive for joe public to have automatic rights to Gov't funded software?
1) It would probably cost you (the taxpayer) money in the long term, to pay for the access bureaucracy, and the extra work needed (or done anyway) to make the code suitable for public consumption.
2) Much of the software is not >>wholely>partial funding meant releasing all IP to the public arena.
4) If the results of all Gov't funded / assisted IP production was public domain, the Gov't would need to think very carefully about what it funded. There are national interest issues here, both related to national security and the well-being of the economy; e.g. competetiveness of US high tech businesses.
Making all US Gov't funded software (and IP in general) available to the public would be counter-productive for the US. As an Australian, I'm all in favour of it
Isn't it true that the government cannot own a copyright on a document? Wouldn't this extend to software? If so, then isn't the software public domain?
Did you have a point to make?
I hope this isn't user number 3,526,693 calling user number 159,763 a newbie. As an aside, this is my second slashdot user name, my first (glyciren) was number 44,475.
All circuits busy.
Weapons the gov't funds the development of are not open. And I don't want them to be. I don't want the software that runs a weapon to be open either. You can't go buy a missile, and you can't go download the code that runs in a missile, and I like it that way.
;).
I mean no offense, but my first response to this post was that you must have been trolling. But I realize that disagreement does not a troll make. You could argue that it would be bad to put free code on the market and hurt businesses, that is plausable, (though see my sarcastic response to this assertion in my previous post above). Yet more plausably you could argue that a government agency can charge or fail to charge for software it comissions or develops as it sees fit, though I still would have some qualms with that argument, given that the government is not a business and does not exist for the sole purpose of making money for the government. Sorry to be so long winded, it is hard enough watching my spellimg with grameer
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
Especially this topic, where I noticed two posts about XP moderated down as trolls when they were merely funny... Either the moderator does not know what a troll is or they are trolls themselves, generating offtopic posts like this present one :).
I agree that the software should be used in a way that serves our best interest. But that doesn't mean that open sourcing is necessarily the best way to do that. A lot of government software is specialized enough that few people can use it. The options the gov has in that case:
- Keep it to yourself. Has the big advantage that you've got no extra costs. The taxpayer gets the benefit for which this software was written.
- Open source the code. This means extra expenses to get it in shape by removing proprietary stuff from other companies, making it less dependant on the specific environment in which the government organisation runs it, making sure there are no references to Roswell and other secret stuff, etc. Those extra costs will bring no benefit to 99.9% of the taxpayers.
- Sell the code if there is interest. This pays for new projects and thus benefits the taxpayer.
I'm not convinced that the second option is always the best.Second, the widespread belief among open source types like myself is that the more eyes that are on the code, the more likely the vulnerabilities will be discovered and ultimately patched.
I'm sure that thousands of developers will eyeball the code (written in Ada or another relatively obscure language) to control the space shuttle's robot arm. Everyone will surely test the code on their own space shuttle. There is a big difference between Linux and a piece of highly specialized software. You can't expect much from these code reviews. Especially since Nasa-software is already extensively reviewed by experts.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
You pay Nasa for exploring space and to boldy go where no one has gone before. You don't pay them to provide you with the software they use to achieve this goal (software for controlling rockets, shuttles and other stuff that I'm sure you don't have). Selling the software to private parties means that they have more money available to achieve their primary goal. This does benefit the taxpayer.
Or perhaps you would rather pay more taxes because Nasa can't sell their software? In return you'd get all the software to control your own space shuttle for free. Wouldn't that be great?
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Here is the name and email address of the guy at NASA quoted in the news announcement. Lets send him some email and tell him what we think of him spending 23 million of our tax money developing proprietary IP owned by somebody else.
Dr. Michael R Lowry
lowry@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
...and you'd also get all the software infrastructure they write to sustain their extremely-high-reliability software development practices. That might be well worth the cash.
You certainly are correct in that space shuttle control software would not be much use to me at all... =). Further, I do concede that you have a good point in that if NASA is able to sell proprietary applications to further raise funds toward their primary objectives, this is a good thing for taxpayers - this would, essentially, put NASA on the same playing field as the Carnegie Foundation itself, which (if I remember correctly) utilises private investment to help fund their public service initiatives, a system which appears to work remarkably well.
However, my concern is not specifically with the fact that NASA's software developed with the help of this project may be proprietary and closed-source. Rather, I am concerned because NASA is donating our tax money to a project whose aim is to create a closed set of guidelines for writing better applications. It does not bother me that NASA might write closed-source, non-free applications with the help of our taxpayer money; on the other hand, it bothers me that Adobe, for example, which is not a public institution and does not primarily serve the government or the taxpayers, might do the same.
While one might argue that the information that is to be provided by this project is not truly closed because anybody can gain access to it by paying a fee, I would disagree on the basis that this information cannot, due to licensing restrictions, be shared with all of the general public whose tax dollars helped fund it, unless they are each able to individually pay the fee. More importantly, perhaps, the value of the research that is to be obtained by this project is sure to far exceed any licensing fees, meaning that those able to afford a license are effectively being given taxpayer money, while those unable to buy a license get nothing at all. This is the foundation of my disagreement with NASA's investment in this project.
I agree that government research should be free for all if possible and sensible (making money on patents might be a good choice in a cases where the knowledge is only advantageous to a select few). It seems that I misread your post as being about software (being an implementation of the knowledge that should be open). Please accept my apologies.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Furthermore, I don't want to comprimise our security by sharing things with people ( or gov'ts ) I don't need to. ( Sure, I know, a bunch of volunteers might help us fix bugs... Sure.. or maybe they will just find the bugs, and not tell us, and use them to exploit us.. )
Sure, some stuff isn't sensative.. And maybe some stuff should be shared.. But I don't think anyone should be off ranting and raving that everything the gov't funds should be open source...
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin