Open Source Code And War

"Should Open Source developers help the U.S. prepare for war with Iraq?" Roblimo has a piece on NewsForge which addresses that question by showing a specific way that the U.S. military is using Free and Open Source software (in simulator-based training for Blackhawk helicopters), and letting one of the developers involved speak for himself. If software is Free, doesn't that already answer the question of who can use it?

Comments

probably not

[sstory]

I mean, if they need to cut and paste from one app to another, or easily manage printers, or add and remove hardware frequently, or do things without having to spend large amounts of time learning arcane info, they should use Windows.

Re:Not with my source codes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets not start a vicious cycle, keep free software free for everyone. Period.

Exactly. A license that restricts what can be done with software does no good for anyone. This is why the GPL is a useless license.

Because if the US military...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is willing to break international law to wage a unilateral war, they sure are going to obey some stupid provision in a modified GPL. Yeah.

Re:Humane Considerations

[lfourrier]

The outcome of this war is certain.
More poor countries despising the USofA.

Commies

[Baldrson]

The fundamental problem with the General Public License is in the definition of "distribute" of paragraph 2b:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

This "distribute" within 2b of the GPL has been explicitly interpreted, by Richard Stallman and others with key position in open source licensing organizations, not to apply to large organizations that deploy software internally. While this means big corporations can deploy GPL'ed software without publishing their modifications to it, thereby favoring centralization of business assets, it also means the ultimate beneficiary of GPL software is the government since it is the biggest organization of them all.

Fundamentally, the GPL is the product of the communist culture from which Stahlman issued as close as his immediate family who were card-carrying members of the US communist party.

If you thought there was a conflict between centralized business and communism you should read more on the history of the communist revolution in Russia -- specifically the half-billion (2003USD) contribution to Leon Trotsky made by Wall Street magnate Jacob Schiff, without which Trotsky could not have started bolshevism.

Trotsky and Schiff both would have approved of the GPL.

Re:Commies

[Baldrson]

Many other instances of communism involve coercing the members who would rather not join. ... Oversimplified, this is why a small commune of like-minded individuals might work (possibly even very well), but no nation managed to exercise true communism.

Tell that to a kid who is being disciplined by his father.

Communism, like theism, feeds on the sociobiology of human kin selection by substituting the idiological "body" for the consanguinous history of a deme.

That's why socialist states like Sweden did so well until mass immigration and why polyglot empires have never sustained altruism for more than a few generations.

Re:A double-edged sword...

[aminorex]

> Would you rather have the military and government
> using open source software or Microsoft?

That parses ambiguously;). Taking it as intended,
I can categorically state that I would rather have
the U.S. military and government using Microsoft,
because I think it is more likely to suffer
catastrophic failures of access security and
availability, thereby saving lives.

Now if you're talking about the government of
Nauru, it's quite another matter.

Re:On Socially Responsible Programming

[n3k5]

Quote from the page referenced above:

And my first words are these: when I hear someone speak of `social responsibility', that's when I reach for my revolver. // In point of fact, I don't actually own a revolver ...

That's right. He owns a pistol and gave another one to his wife. Those are not revolvers. As much as I admire works like the cathedral and bazar essay, since I've seen stuff like "Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life's simple pleasures..." and Eric's Gun Nut Page, this guy is among the last people on earth I'd ask to talk about social responsibility in anything.

Which law have they broken?

[porkchop_d_clown]

Going to war would be in compliance with resolution 1441.