Slashdot Mirror
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."
Will it help their aim at Mars?
It's good to see this kinda thing start to happen. I feel that space exploration is humanity's job as a whole. What a great way to promote all humanity contributing to the space exploration effort than by contributing source code. Granted, I know this doesn't mean it's all gonna be done open source-like, but hey, it's still cool and in a way, allows everyone to participate.
ikeya
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
Just make sure that all of your coders are using the same measurment system.
Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.
My rights don't need management.
double Feet2Meters(double feet)
{
return feet * 0.3048;
}
...is it "GNASA" now?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I thought the government couldn't copywrite anything. Or does NASA not count?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Is there some page which compares all the licenses in some table, or in english language terms?
Something like: the Creative Commons explains for their licenses would be very helpful for comparing: MIT X11, BSD, GPL, LGPL, BSD, OSL, Mozilla PL, Apple PL, etc...
If this does not exist, the community would benefit from it!
jabber: johnynek@jabber.org
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?
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?
Ever work in a large software shop? I didn't think so.
Any operation of any size at all generates lots of software tools and libraries that are more or less generic.
In addition, NASA does lots of Scientific Visualization, materials engineering, simulations, data acquisition and other stuff that is not directly related to embedded flight control systems. Lot's of good science that's not just "Office Stuff".
I'm probably missing more than a few, but just these examples are things that could be opened up.
I seem to remember a long time ago about an incident where Bill Gates of Borg toured NASA and offered to GIVE AWAY PCs with M$ Windows on them so that NASA essentially ran on Windows. NASA supposedly did a long term study on Windows and determined that it was not stable enough to run the Space Shuttle and mission control equipment. There would be no way to recover the Space Shuttle during a launch in the event of a Blue Screen Of Death. This is supposedly the reason why Linux is so prevalent inside NASA. I may some facts wrong here, but this is pretty much what I heard through the grape vine.
Government Superior #1: "Were you able to trace it?"
Government Worker #1: "No, it's coming from all over the place, sir! We can't stop it!"
Government Superior #1: "Hmm... Perhaps... No, it can't be.. Not the dreaded SlashDotting..."
*RED ALERT*
If you are operating on the cutting edge of some new technology, you are probably writing your own tools. Else, off-the-shelf tools are suitable for following in the footsteps of others. And you trust the software actually performs as specified.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
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.
The submitter said "some" projects.
What on earth makes you think they'd use linux or other OSS to develop the space shuttle software? First of all, the development process for space shuttle software is quite possibly the most rigorous software development process in the world (it is , BTW). There isn't a chance in hell open-source software would be allowed into a level 5 process, because it's not controlled properly. They would essentially have to rewrite any OSS software they used from scratch, just to meet CMM level 5 requirements.
Second, suppose despite point #1, they decide to use the linux kernel on the space shuttle. Obviously, they'd have to adapt the kernel to suit their needs, since most of the hardware on the shuttle is custom designed and built for it. Under the GPL they would have to release any changes they make to the kernel back into the public domain. This would be equivalent to providing a very detailed blueprint of how all the critical systems on the space shuttle function. Especially given the current political environment, do you really think the administration is going to divulge this kind of information to the public?
Like anyone waits for these reports to be written. At least it gave an intern something to do.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
just my personal theory.
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)
If you just cast a magical spell "gpl mpl bsd apache" on google.com, you get:
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/expo/lw-thurTry this page.
May we never see th
I just can't see how this particular choice of license makes things better for the Linux community. NASA seems to be deliberately slapping us in the face with this.
It seems, from the PDF document (page 8) that their intent is to enable commercial exploitation of their code:
I think that since I've paid once for this proposed code, through my taxes, that there's something fundamentally wrong with allowing NASA to give the code to a business which will ask me to pay for it a second time.I'm sure that NASA hopes to collect a fat bribe ... no, a fat license fee ... no, a ``contribution to the Space Program''. That's what I said above, in the preceeding paragraph: this robbery is motivated by a desire to gouge me a second time for the work I paid for once.
See what I've been reading.
43 more moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter. All of which are now named Firebird.
Get paid to code OSS
So it's really great that some people within NASA are making a more formal push for open source software, and are even discussing releasing some of their own, but open source within NASA is hardly new!
Why not advocate choosing the best possible package? Who cares if it is open / closed / hybrid source, as long as it functions properly?
But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure. She declined to reveal if the firm received identical reports from other users in the country.
You can't complain about Microsoft FUD when the Anti-Microsoft FUD is just as bad.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
If memory serves there was a big stink about NASA (Johnson Space Center Houston) switching their administrative desktops from Macs to Windows just a few years ago. If they kept all of the Mac hardware they could probably ressurect them as Linux terminals.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
that Dan Goldin, a.k.a. "the man who replaced all the Macs" at NASA would stand for it. He is FIRMLY in the Microsoft camp, and in 1997 appeared as a booster in Microsoft advertisements for Windows NT 4.0.
Goldin replaced perfectly good I.T. infrastructure with Microsoft equipment in the name of standardization; it says a lot about the entrenched bullshit beaurocracy at NASA that he rose so meteorically through the ranks at the Space Administration.
Obviously, they'd have to adapt the kernel to suit their needs, since most of the hardware on the shuttle is custom designed and built for it. Under the GPL they would have to release any changes they make to the kernel back into the public domain.
No, they wouldn't. This is just FUD. See the GPL FAQ:
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. [...] If you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the users, under the GPL
They'd only have to make the source public if they were also distributing the customised kernel. Chances are, they're only going to use their executable in this custom hardware of theirs.
Manned spaceflight and new civilization on Venus? Would you volunteer for this? Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System, with an average surface temperature of 854.33F. In addition to this, it's atmosphere is a poisonous combination of sulfuric acid and Carbon Dioxide. It is completely unihabitable, several, if not most of the unmanned probes we have sent there have just completely melted, and you want us to send someone there? How about you go to Venus. Now, Mars is a possibility. The main limiting factor right now keeping us from going to Mars is the distance. Then again though, the reason NASA hasn't sent anyone there yet it lack of money, and as someone else has already said, do you think a private corporation is going to send someone there, when there is little or nothing for them to gain out of the billions, possibly trillions of dollars they would have to spend on it?
~Brian
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.
Well, they can use OSS, customise it as they want and control it with their onw internal policies which meet CMM level 5. Though they would need a CMM level 5 mechanism to include the newer versions of the code, with their own maintained one.
The change management mechanism /version control policies have to internal and strictly controlled.
They are not required to sync their local copy of code, with nigthly builds or daily CVS snap-shots.
Your second point is another gross mis-conception about GPL.
Please read this carefully
- GPL doesn't require the changes to be resubmitted if the changes are not distributed. I can obtaine source for linux kernel and change it to what i want and use it internally for my personal or business . As long as i don't distribute (sell/give away free) my kernel modifications, I don't have to submit back the changes
- Also they are thinking of using the Mozilla license, which is significantly different from GPL or LGPL to be precise.
Please don't spread FUD about something that you don't understand.for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
NASA Ames was Cygnus's first customer back in 1989. Support for GCC, GDB and the binutils. I know, I signed the contract.
Most of the parts of NASA that aren't politicized are really very good. NASA will go for anything that really gets the job done.
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. :-(
...it's just a plan by NASA to get Microsoft to pay for a new Shuttle program.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
While I agree that in theory it's possible, I'm not so sure you can just incorporate outside sources so easily into a CMM L5 project, since all of the previously existing development isn't up to snuff. There would be no design documents or QA for the kernel until it was brought in-house, so you'd have to spend several man-years just doing QA on the existing code to "prove" that it was safe.
At work (I'm a scientist) we wanted to use some software developed by NASA. It was available for 200 hundred dollars, which is fine. What isn't fine is that in the end we couldnt buy it because our lab is based in the UK and thus "our tax dollars" hadnt gone into its creation.
No great shakes, I wrote my own version over a weekend (which tells you something about how sensitive or proprietry this stuff was, *and* it was about 12 years old) but it was a weekend I would rather have had off work.
Point is this, I'll be impressed with this change if it means that NASA will be conforming with the standard scientific practices of sharing data and (within reason) tools as most European researchers do as a matter of course.
1. Go to SourceForge and search for PDF
2. ???
3. Profit.
BTW, if you don't like the licenses and/or the code available there, do what I did: get the PDF spec and "clean room" it. The spec is, for the most part, quite lucid. I've probably spent 50-60 man-hours digesting the spec and coding. I've got scalable graphics working nicely now. That was all I really wanted, but now that I'm familiar with it, text and images are just an incremental upgrade. I've coded for text, but I haven't tested it. Inline images will require you to link in some encoding and compression but once you've done that it's all good.
I agree with you that HTML is much better for screen viewing. PDF is for printing, not screen-viewing. Improper use of PDF on the web has probably killed as many trees as Dutch Elm disease. Adobe's crappy free viewer pisses me off. It defaults to jerky page-viewing. I switch to "continuous" and whenever I move, it leaves bit-barf on the screen, and if I allow it to embed in IE it crashes half the time. The open spec almost makes up for that. Try doing a Google search to find the document. Google will sometimes provide an HTML version of PDFs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
..YES, I see no problem with the first humans there to claim it, and also declare their independence. This deal where only the currently established nations are IT, like no new ones are "allowed" some how, is bogus. I can see a group of investors and pioneers claiming mars, why shouldn't they? If no one else wants to go there, and they expend the energy and cost and take the huge risks? I see no moral claim to the current monopoly holders, none, hardly a nation out there that has the same borders it started out with. And I'll go further, NASA and the US government doesn't "own" space, it's none of their business if anyone decides to travel there. I think if someone can come up with a launching place someplace that the trajectory doesn't interfere or pose a risk to other people, say out over the 'free" ocean, then that's their lookout then. Launch away, and don't ask NASAs permission. This is like when they tried to squash space tourism, ta heck with that noise! Adventure, tourism, that's part of what builds exploration. It's not all of it, but back through human history a lot of places got explored almost just "because", it's what adventursome people DO. Ya, they would look for sponsors back then, swell, we can still use that technique. As to who, no idea, but I bet a nickle you could get interest in it. shares? How about colonize mars shares? buck a apiece? who knows, someone IS going there, I hate to have it only the few big governments we have now though, seems sort of bogus, because none of them are really all that great.. they mostly suck. US, china, russia, etc, none of them have a great track record, except exploitation.
When the explorers and pilgrims came to north america, they just really wanted to be free, to be rid of the old kings and weirdness, to just have a chance to start over, be themselves. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but that was a major part of it. Some were just looters and mercenaries and soldiers from some bogus regime, but a lot more were just.. pioneers. Space is the same deal. And I'd rather it was free of current established government controls and manipulations if at all possible. Dangerous and expensive? Yes! That's part of adventure! Risks and maybe some rewards? You bet, that's great!
And the MAIN deal to go there, what the reward is-it's ANOTHER PLANET, it's *not* "the earth".
We done ran out of continents to discover and colonize, you can't even colonize antarctica, because the monopoly governments all said "no mining", which you would need to do to live there full time, just to have adequate energy and raw materials, and they would send their bogus militaries to kill you, so that's out. Space, the deck might be stacked more evenly. Maybe,maybe not, but we won't know unless we try, and my guess is, humans will try it. I just hope it's free and independent humans, that's all.