Open Source for SETI Software?

CommonModeNoise asks: "The SETI Institute is thinking about going to an open source model for some of our software. We have little experience with Open Source so we would like to ask the following: To what degree can an open-source project be self-managing -- how many of our staff will be needed to keep such an activity running productively? How can we deal with the lunatic fringe that will be attracted to something as provocative as SETI? Can open source development proceed at the same speed as traditional in-house development, or will it be slower? Some of our software controls hardware, for example the Allen Telescope Array; can such control software be developed using open source methods or are we better off focussing on the software-only systems, such as the next generation of our signal detectors? Finally, could we please get some suggestions as to what to read to get a better grasp of the varieties of open source development models and their respective good and bad points."

Comments

Re:As a seti@home user.....

[terbo]

I dont know nothin either, all I know is if a program is running on my computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I'd really like to have some insight as to what its doing.

Re:As a seti@home troll.....

[Pharmboy]

SETI is quite different. It gets data from some misterious source, does some unknown analysis of it (in theory), draws pretty pictures, and sends processed data back. It could as well work on cracking encryption, and I bet nobody would notice.

Perhaps I am not nearly as concerned that Berkeley is actually a front organization for Ashcroft and the rest of the "right wing conspiracy".

But seriously, I consider the source. It is sponsored by a university known for protesting against every military action, located in a town that was one of the first to pass a resolution against the current war.

Also, SETI@home major users of the client include Sun, Ohio University, Intel and others, who have surely looked inside. If you go to SETI@home they explain in great detail what the program is doing.

Because Berkeley is so liberal and what I consider "anti-USA" I had considered NOT participating in SETI. In the end, I decided the science was more important than the politics.

Basically, I am saying that there is so much info out there, you would have to be paranoid to be worried that Berkeley is actually a front to have us decrypt stuff for the govt. I have done my homework (more than the moderator who modded this as a troll). I know what server it connects to, its not a mysterious source. (I have a firewall that only lets it connect on port 80 to one FQDN)

We may disagree on principal, which is fine. But don't be under any illusion that I have not done my homework. I trust seti because I feel I have good reason to trust them. More so than other distributed computing programs.

Oh, and Adobe Photoshop ALSO is for editing pictures. It tries to connect to mysterious servers all the time. Ask anyone who has it behind a firewall.