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

Re:yah

[invader_allan]

no fair i saw it first }8^)>

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:muslims are all evil! caliphate of DEATH

[Anonymous Coward]

Death to King Fahd, DEATH to the Leaders of Islam! Death to that religion. We need to purify the Islam Muslim murderers and save them from Religion, NO RELIGION should be mandated before that SCUM SHIT. ITS A CULT. Like Charles Manson, like NAZIS CULT. DEATH TO ISLAM!

CLITORIS CHOPPERS. Hi there you fucking Islamic career clerics, doctors of death, Waffen Schutzstaffel doctor Josef Mengele is a patron saint compared to you fucking ragheads. You suck. You aide and abet terror and death. You are partially responsible for the deaths of other fellow men. For this fratricide you shall pay dearly. Your soul is black with the stains of inaction, ineptitude and sympathies to those who walk the dark side. Your foul life is full of sins, not religious, just heinous, your karma is low, you don't confess, and you aren't in prison where you belong. You are your own dark, kept secret. I see through you, the worthless academic, the pseudo intellectual, the unproven unpublished un patented WASTE OF FUCKING FLESH. You are a drain on society, you are a member of the 1st world but pretend to not be. I hate you, you are a stained man.

Hi clitoris chopper, ISLAM supports clitoris carving. You are Islamic, and of course are a fucking animal. I hate you you pull-start camel jockey lover. Towelheads, Camel Jockies, Sand Niggers, Ackmids, Abeebs, Carpet Flyers, Dune Coons, Rag Heads, Sand Scratchers, Habeebs, Abba-Dabbas, Camel-Humpers, Demi-niggers, Fig-Gobblers, Hucka-luckas (hucka hlacka ghalcka ghugh), Lefties (If you steal, you lose the right hand so, since they are thieves...) Ocnods, Pull-Start-ables (imagine pull starting Ossama's dirty rag like a Briggs and Stratton), Roach-Ranchers (habibs cant kill roaches by a tenant of Is-slum), Sand Moolies.

Shut up all you dirty fucking Islamic pigfucking swinehundts and the pigs, the communist fuckin Islamic terrorist supporter.

Take your fucking Koran and cram it up your ass. The sooner the earth sees Islam leave it, the better off it will be. Your Koran is Goat Piss.

I hope if there is a God and a Hell, you have to drink the liquidy shit from a Pig's ass, and Jewish Rabbis defecate on you.

I hate the stupid ISLAM fucks who read into the trash they come up with. Saddam Hussein [who needs to take a dirt nap] is higher on my sanity list than fucking Muslim "clerics." In fact, I like Saddam more than most of the other Arab leaders because he is secular. We should fucking nuke the Saudis and Mecca and Medina and turn it into rubble, then tell Saddam to remove the heads of all the buttfucking "royalty" in the area.

I want to wipe my ass with Mohammad's shroud. I want to grind his body up into bone meal and fertilize my garden with it.

Our tortured dead scream out in HORROR, asking for vengeance:

1. Kill all Camel Jockeys.
2. Kill all Mohammedans.
3. Kill all Dune Coons.
4. Kill all Rag Heads.
5. Kill all Towelheads.
6. Kill all Arabs.
7. Kill all Camel Rooters.
8. Kill all Osama Bin Laden supporters.

Nuke their countries to hell.

Nuke them again.

Death to Islam.

I piss on Mecca. I wipe my ass with the Koran. I shit upon Mohammed. I wipe the cum for a freshly fucked pussy with Mohammed's shroud then throw it in the pig sty so it can mire in pig shit as it decomposes.

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.