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NASA Report Advocates Switch to Open Source
vortimax writes "A new technical report from the NASA Ames Research Center advocates the adoption of Open Source Software internally by NASA for some projects. The paper also proposes modifications to NASA's "external software release" policies to allow OSS and proposes the use of the Mozilla Public License as the license of choice for NASA software."
If I am crunching shuttle code at home, how do I test it? Wouldn't be a security problem to publically report the hooks and calls to write such code?
Of course, NASA does office stuff, networking, etc... I guess "some projects" would have to be highly specific. But if you are gonna help NASA, who wants to help the secretary? I wanna help the shuttle fliers get in on the P2P action... (heck, pinging the shuttle would probably be faster than pinging some of the servers I've been using lately.)
Davak
Maybe if Microsoft had opened up its source, as NASA seems to be saying it might allow for some code, may be the Thai Minister would now be happily cruising the streets in his BMW without a care in the world.
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A lot of public money has gone into NASA over the years, so to some people's way of thinking, the people already own that source code. I'm suprising some National Security types aren't stamping all over this already though
find more potp = www.planetofthepenguins.com
This is a remarkably balanced report for a government. It advocates a mix of internally developed and external software, including both open source and proprietary software, depending upon the situation.
You'd think this was a pretty obvious take, but far too often government processes are hijacked by either open source zealots or commercial interests. Leaning in either direction can cause great technical difficulty and cost to the public.
Keep in mind that NASA has no great software policy, but a huge amoung of software in place. A policy to ensure consistency and fairness over much of the existing software uses could have great advantages in efficiency for the organization. Of course, what you think of the existance of NASA in the first place or its usefulness in its current form is up to you...
Hate to break it to you but manned space flight has already been pioneered.
A small private company would want to invest the billions necessary to go to Mars because ?? What possible financial gain gould they possibly realise within any realistic timeframe for a company's survival. Who would back them, who would insure them? Would they go and claim Mars for themselves if they got there in the best capitalist manner ?
Proper space exploration is better left to the big boys and international co operation for the time being. Hopefully they can learn something from the independent efforts in the meantime
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Excepting anything that might be considered secret and confidential (like missile guidance software ... which probably never gets released anyway), why isn't all NASA software public domain?
I'm going on the assumption that we are talking solely about all the US taxpayer funded engineers making software there. Why isn't this stuff by definition public?
It's not the fact that open source has fewer bugs.
Open source has the advantage of being able to be picked through with a fine tooth comb, and bugs can be resolved by onsite or offsite staff.
Imagine if the geek community had the ability to actually test Nasa software, simulations, flight plans. Some guy in Nambia might discover a bug that could save a mission. While Nasa has a trained staff of people... it is no match the joint effort of thousands, or millions of people.
While it's almosts assured that nasa has machines that *whips the llamas* ass, it no were matches the joint computing power of the planet earth.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I used to work for Microsoft and was asked to help NASA several times with support/dev issues they were experiencing. I've visited the Space Center in Cape Canaveral, as well as some other external NASA locations, and they are using a lot of MS technologies. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the Open Source movement, but NASA has a long way to go before any Open Source initiative has any real impact on their development. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited they made this decision, but it's a very small step. Besides, NASA has an extremely rigorous testing campaign for all new hardware and software, so these changes won't be noticed for some time to come. Otherwise this is a great step forward for OSS and I'm very pleased to hear about it! When I was working with them there was a huge aversion to OSS and it gave me the impression that they were diehard MS. There may still be hope for America's space development!
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
I think the word "classified" over-rules the idea of copywrite. Government owned crypto I guess would still be public domain, they're just not showing it to us.
Hmm, wonder if I can get the source to Carnivore under the Freedom of Information Act?
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Just make sure that all of your coders are using the same measurment system.
.value and .unit members, and math functions that perform conversions whenever necessary.
Or write a class that has both
I am in a research lab working on software engineering tools and most of us would love to release the tools that we develop as Open Source. Unfortunately, we need to get the administration's support. (We've been trying for over a year on a software model checker named Java Path Finder and haven't had any luck yet.) We have other stuff like an C++ AST language model (in XML/Java) that we are currently developing that would also be nice to release.
I can understand the administration's desire to keep the software ownership for itself, but the greater good would be for us to release the tools under GPL. Especially, since the opportunities for commericialization are much more limited than they were a few years ago. Releasing the tools as Open Source would make them available to many more people and dramatically increase the impact of the work. A further complication was mentioned in the report is that we have a lot of contractors (~40%?) and the IP ownership is determined by the particular contract. *sigh*
We also use a lot Open Source code, including linux, x11, xemacs, ssh, gcc, cvs, etc. and it would be nice to give something back to the community.
It's disappointing seeing how much bureaucracy I'd have to go through to release our secure HTTP and CIFS proxy/portal. We don't have time to work on it any longer and superior commercial products exist now. So why not give our code away, let interested hackers turn it into something really cool. But it would be a nightmare of approvals, especially his citation from the NASA Procedures and Guideline ( http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/library/displayDir.cfm ?Internal_ID=N_PG_2210_001A_&page_name=main&search _term=2210
)
I don't expect officials are really gonna want to read our code to ensure there's nothing of value to cryptoporn terrorists.So the code with just languish in our CVS repo, and die due to lack of interest. :-(
I'd say that the only difference between Mozilla developers and NASA is that the Moz developers paid their own way, while NASA has been funded by me (and you too, if you're in the US). That gives me a right to criticise NASA which I really don't have for Mozilla. The vital difference is that when the Moz developers license their code, it's really their code. When NASA licenses ``their code'', it's partly mine, in the sense that you and I paid for it.
I think there's one other difference, too: didn't Mozilla at least attempt to dual-license, using MPL and GPL? So, I'd say that NASA is morally bound to behave better than this, and isn't living up to their moral obligations, while the Moz team has behaved rather better than they absolutely had to.
Would you react this way if NASA had decided to release all of the code under a BSD-type license, ...
No. The BSD license, or public domain, would allow us to actually USE the code we paid to develop, in the sense of incorporating it into our own works. The MPL precludes that sort of use. That's what makes it a slap in the face of the Linux community, specifically.
In essence, the situation is totally different, as I just explained.
Here's an important but apparently subtle distinction: NASA exists to serve the US citizens, and is funded by them. NOT ``We exist to serve them, and fund them.''
Again, I, and every other citizen, have paid for the work NASA has done. We should be allowed to make use of it on equal terms. GPL licensing would allow that: everyone could use the work equally, and no-one could obtain a monopoly over it. We start equal, and stay that way. That's fair to all. RedHat and Cygnus and Trolltech show us that you can build a business on the GPL, and IBM and others have shown that existing megacorps can profit from the GPL.
A BSD-style license would allow authors of GPL'd software to reuse the code, but would allow, at least potentially, someone to obtain a monopoly using the code. I object to that.
The MPL has at least the same problems as the BSD licese, plus at least the additional problem that MPL'ed code cannot be linked to GPL'ed code. I keep saying ``at least'' because unlike the GPL, the MPL is full of lawyer-speak, and will require long and careful parsing, with a copy of Black's close at hand.
I object to using such a license as the MPL for code for which I have been forced to pay. The GPL seems an acceptable choice for code which we have ALL been forced to pay for, with the BSD license running a very distant second. MPL really isn't in the running, as far as I'm concerned.
See what I've been reading.