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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.)"
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!
True, granted, this is justified as something to better the agency. But when I read stories and bits of news that paints NASA as one of the poorest agencies of the land, one finds $23 mil to be quite a chunk of change to pull out to give the kids at a university some spending money so they can develop something that may not turn out as expected.
Yet before and during this, you read stories of projects that NASA had to shut down due to budget cuts, and I think, please correct me if mistaken, NASA Concidering auctioning parts via online auctions to help raise money. Even with just the budget cuts, to me that tells me that $23 Mil is not just some spare cash they had laying around the office. Granted, it's towards developing dependable software that if achived, would reduce the risk factors of future missions and projects (not totally, but at least you have a better chance of not getting a B.S.O.D. when 1/2 way to mars.).
So after that, I see the goal and I applaude it, but I just feel somewhat mislead to believe the agency was in money troubles, really isn't. Kind of like loaning a friend $100 so they can pay rent, only to see them hauling in a 63" Flat Screen T.V. they just bought the next week.
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Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
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
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.