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Cougaar 10.4.6 Released With Source
Anonymous Software Agent writes "Cougaar release 10.4.6 has been posted .
As always, all source code is available via anonymous CVS.
Cougaar is an open-source Java-based architecture for the construction of distributed agent-based applications. It is the product of an eight-year DARPA-funded research project in highly scalable and survivable multi-agent systems. Cougaar is currently used in next-generation military logistics systems, commercial applications, and research projects.
Cougaar release 10.4.6 adds survivable yellow pages and white pages services, and multiple other performance and reliability improvements."
While certainly generous, the Cougaar license is designed specifically to prevent anyone from profiting from the sale of the software:
3. Licensee may use, sell or give away the Cougaar Software or any Derivative Work, alone or as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing Licensee Software, Cougaar Applications and/or programs from several different sources. No royalty or other fee is required. If Licensee sublicenses the Cougaar Software or Derivative Works, Licensee may charge fees for warranty or support, or for accepting indemnity or liability obligations of customers, provided that Licensee does not charge for the Cougaar Software or Derivative Work.
That along makes it unfree.
It seems just about no one has heard about Cougaar before (I know I haven't), and very few know what agents/aglets are, so here is a link to the FAQ!
Posted anonymously to prevent carma whoring, since 2001.
Python is far from being strongly typed.
This is false by any definition of strong typing I've seen. This isn't even something one can have an opinion on, it's just wrong.
Portrait of a strongly typed language:
>>> a="some string"
>>> a + 5
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in ?
TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects
In a weakly typed language (i.e. perl), the statement will just break in mysterious ways:
$a="some string";
$a = $a + 5;
print "$a\n";
(prints 5)
See also dynamic typing and static typing (python is dynamically and strongly typed. It breaks when you do stupid stuff like that, but not until runtime. Ocaml is statically and strongly typed. It breaks at compile time when you try to do stupid stuff like that).
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Mobile agents are essentially code which moves over a network and executes locally. You could launch one, turn off your computer, and during the night it moves over the Net collecting your data, computing something or run a server... When you turned your computer back on in the morning the agent would return to you with your search result, or whatever.
You can understand why this is attractive, it would make the "system that keeps running even though part of it is nuked" closer to reality. It would also take P2P and distributed computing to a new level.
While it is interesting in theory, they usually run into problems when implementing it in practice. If you think about it, the "moving over the net and executing wherever" sounds a lot like a virus, right? Therefore, they have to make a sandbox on the server for the agents to play in, so that they don't access sensitive data, or crash the host computer by using up all resources etc. Also, the agent and its contents have to be protected from potentially malicious hosts, so that they don't get sensitive data exposed or corrupted.
So when you apply all the security checks and encryption you need, the sandbox and agents become very bloated and slow to execute. Bloated agents move very slowly over the network and take up bandwidth... not good.
Aglets is an early Java based test system for this, the name stands for "agile applets".
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die