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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."
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.
double Feet2Meters(double feet)
{
return feet * 0.3048;
}
...is it "GNASA" now?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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.
...
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
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
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.
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-thurI 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?
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.
Unfortunately this seems to be a hoax:
CNET reports that, contrary to rumours that the BMW that trapped a Thai minister inside earlier this week was "the famously glitchy BMW 745i car, and its Windows CE-powered iDrive car computer", it was, according to a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand, the 10-year old BMW 520i model that "suffered a simple electronic failure".
(from Looswire)
Sailing over the event horizon
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.
That reminds me of the time I had circa 1991. I was out shopping for cars, and I thought I would have a look at the BMW 5 series. They had one in a color I liked, and I asked if I could look inside. This one had just come in, and its battery was dead. Turns out, the car had some kind of all-electronic door locks, and there was no mechanical way to unlock the car. The battery would have to be charged first; there was a plug under the bumper to do that in just this situation. Here we were at the BMW dealer, and they couldn't get inside their own car. Not good.
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.
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