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.)"

Comments

NASA Has Money?

[Knoxvill3]

Here they are telling us they need money, yet the have $23 million to give away?

Free the software

[jhoger]

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?

Re:Free the software

[HisMother]

I'm so tired of hearing this nonsense every time there is a story about a U.S. government software project. Sorry, kids, but most of you haven't thought this thing through.

Here's the deal, folks: imagine you work for one of several companies that makes software that does X. Now, a government agency develops its own software that does X, perhaps because they need a feature that no company supports, or they need to be doubly sure it's bug free, etc. Furthermore, assume the agency's software kicks ass (believe it or not, much government-developed software is pretty damn good.)

Now, if that agency releases its software to the public domain, how do you, and your company, and your competitors feel? Would all enjoy being driven out of business by your own tax dollars at work? How would this "foster U.S. economic competitiveness" (a stated part of the mission of most government agencies?)

Didn't think so, and no, it wouldn't. That's why a good deal of government-developed software and technologies aren't just given away.

Re:Free the software

[jhoger]

Lose the tude, pal, your logic ain't that solid.

By your reasoning, we shouldn't have any government roads since that would compete with toll roads.

No military since that would compete with mercenaries.

And your argument about that companies tax dollars is pretty ridiculous too, since they likely only put in a miniscule fraction of the money that went into that product. The government does owe any corporation the protection of its industry, whether from publicly funded software or their competitors, or foreign competitors.

We should have access to the IP our dollars produce. Is that so hard to understand?

Re:Free the software

[SEWilco]

Uh... If the government produces software which is better than what your company has, your competitors can buy it for a few thousand dollars. Government does want research and side effects made available (the term is "technology transfer) because otherwise it is wasted. [insert favorite NASA tech examples such as moon buggy rubber allowing winter radial tires]

Any of your competitors will have it. Your company should also buy a copy, so you can use its improvements in your product and keep ahead of the competition.

Making the software available free just means that many small businesses and freelancers can browse and get inspiration from it. And most businesses are small businesses, with the occasional big company arising from them.

Re:Free the software

[tempest303]

Note that by giving something away that another company was selling, the agency would be actively shrinking the economy -- reducing the GNP by the cost of unsold software.

Oh my god, Bill & Co were RIGHT! Open Source WILL destroy the economy!

Orrr..... maybe the money that would have been spent on the thing being given will just go to something else, putting more cash flow into a difference sector.

And so it goes

[tchdab1]

>>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?

Public funds should equal public source.

[rushfan]

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.

Re:Public funds should equal public source.

[enigma48]

I'd like to throw my two bits in.

Public funds should not equal public source. There is my bias.

Public funds SHOULD provide public benefit. I don't want tactical nuke control software public sourced so people can browse through, so I guess we'll have to have a restriction there. Oh, and there is that evil cellular lobby that wants to co-fund a project with the government so we'll have to stop that because the cellular companies want to keep some info private.

Eventually, so many exceptions will have to be made, we'll end up with what we have now - sometimes, research stays private, even if we paid for it. By and large, it is publicly available.

In a system where the government imposes must-share rules on everything they touch, we'll also have to identify every penny that came in. Also, if partnering with a company, we'll have to make sure they don't provide anyone that might learn something and use it at the company.

To sum it up: open sourcing everything is wrong. Closing access to all information is wrong. There needs to be a balance.

Worst case scenario in a mixed-system: a company gets access to research that taxpayers can't see. Obviously, there is no benefit to taxpayers correct?

Forgot to mention, the research was on how to get 5x the battery life on Li-ion batteries. The company makes better batteries and makes more money. If they choose to hire more people, we benefit. If they keep all the profit and change nothing, anyone owning stock in the company benefits.

When research is used successfully, it is nearly impossible for society to lose (insert your favourite anti-nuclear idea here to "prove" me wrong). The benefits of everyone being able to use research as opposed to a few (or one) entity seeing that research is small, maybe even zero.

Society benefits from research. This is what we want to encourage, not one-rule-fits-all thinking.

end rant.

Jeff
If you don't like what I have to say, hit "reply" and post your thoughts for discussion, don't mod anyone down because you disagree.

On paying for a private project with public money

[Niten]

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.

Where is the problem here?

[jimmcq]

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?

Re:Where is the problem here?

[tempest303]

Hey, we're paying for it so we should get to use it.

The only question for me is whether it needs to be GPL, LGPL, or BSD licensed.

Re:Where is the problem here?

[startled]

"So NASA needs some Sustainable Computing and they spent $23million of their budget to get it. Where is the problem here?"

We give gov money. Gov gives NASA money. NASA gives SCC money. SCC develops cool software, and gives businesses a great deal on it.

Well, if corps were the only ones paying taxes, no problem. But I pay taxes, too. And here's what they claim Sustainable Computing is supposed to do:
The environment we characterize as sustainable computing is one in which:
Software is developed with quality, dependability and security in mind from inception, and these attributes can be accurately measured and validated
Software is resilient in the face of unexpected challenges; and
Developers, users, and policymakers interact based on fairness, precision, and a shared interest in the vitality and competitiveness of the software industry.

Sounds totally sweet. Sounds useful for everyone. Why not open it up?

"Is this trying to imply that all NASA software should be free?"

That argument could be made, but this is a much simpler argument. I don't want to quibble about hardware-specific software for some hacked-together satellite. The question is, should we open up broadly useful software to the people who paid for it? I say: why not? Hell, make it free for commercial use. Here's the SCC's argument again: "Recent estimates suggest that defective software accounted for 45% of computer downtime and cost U.S. companies over $100 billion annually".

Okay. They claim it's very important to the entire U.S.. Well guess who paid for it: that's right, everyone. So give it to us already! I could care less about some hardware-specific code for some hacked-together satellite; quibble about that amongst yourselves. But "improvements in software quality and security" would benefit everyone. If they're not going to hand it out for free, cut out the corporate welfare and make them develop their own damned software-- maybe then these things would get developed in the private sector, and NASA could get it a hell of a lot cheaper.

Support from an unlikely source

[driehuis]

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.