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."

Comments

DAMNIT!

[NoData]

And here a just shelled out $129 to upgrade to Panthaar.

Unending confusion

[murdox]

No kidding- and when it comes down to it, the next release of Mac OS X will probably be called Cougar! So there will eventually be a Cougar 10.4.6 as well as a Cougaar 10.4.6. Good grief...

Jeff Warren
www.ceggos.com

Not free

[Dancin_Santa]

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.

Re:Not free

[Brandybuck]

Not quite. Before you get your panties in a bunch, look closer.

It's quite explicit that you can "sell or give away the Cougaar Software or any Derivative Work". Case solved. You can sell it.

The second term is a bit puzzling. "If Licensee sublicenses the Cougaar Software or Derivative Works...Licensee does not charge for the Cougaar Software or Derivative Work". The key word here is "sublicenses".

You can sell the software or its derivatives all you want. Only if you sublicense it are you forbidded to charge for the software itself (though you may certainly charge for the media, bandwidth, support, manuals, etc). When you sublicense, the recipient is getting the license from YOU, not from the original author. This is a subtle distinction, and one few ever make in the Free Software World. What does it mean?

Not being a lawyer, I suspect it's primarily to mollify the legal types. Note that sublicensing is required to offer indemnity or liability (even if it weren't explicitly stated in the license). I suspect that this means if you create a business off of the software, you cannot sell the software itself, but only the warranty and support.

The license is Free as in FSF. Don't worry about it.

Re:I'm glad you explained what Cougar is

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought upon seeing the name was that it was some kind of rejected pokemon.

<ASH> Look! It's conducting rapid, large scale, distributed logistics planning and replanning!
<COUGAAR> COOOO-GAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRR!

I think this is the future of computing.

[Sheetrock]

Essentially, agent-based computing is P2P used in a positive way -- multiple redundant systems working together to achieve a common goal, much as is done by ants in a colony.

Like the Internet, but with other goals than networked communications. I think this is the sort of thing that will finally bring the convergence that was always talked about in regards to the Internet (an alarm clock, coffee, toaster, car starter, etc. that are aware of your schedule, not unlike the opening scene of Back To The Future).

Does C# have anything like this, or is this easily portable to C# or any other strongly typed portable languages such as Python? It'd be nice to have another alternative to Java, which seems to cause problems for some people.

Good release testing strategy

[darnok]

1. Create new release
2. Install shiny new distributed agents on Web servers
3. Announce new release on Slashdot
4. Examine performance of Web server agents under extreme load. Saves all that expensive load testing time and expense...
5. Announce new "stress tested version" shortly afterwards

Re:8 years and Java based?

[russellh]

Is Java already eight years old?

HotJava was released in early 1995, iirc. that was why we upgraded to solaris from sunOS. You know, so we could play tic-tac-toe like it was 1978!

The Cougaar FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Java was a mistake for this project

[axxackall]

Java is not the language designed for distributed agents. For that I would use Erlang or Mozart or even Mercury, but not Java.

In those languages distributed programming itself is solved more elegant and error proof. Besides, they have very strong mechanism of constraint logic. Even more - distributed constraint logic. And no need to repeat that functional programming languages are more effective for complicated logical tasks.

Oppositely, in Java the agent developer feels like in assembly. Don't repeat me the mantra about the garbage collector: functional programming languages have it since 1957 (first Lisp).

Well, if brains of their project decision makers are already corrupted by procedural programming (or even worse - by merketing hype of Java) then nothing can fix that. It's just one more government-wasted effort.

Re:Java was a mistake for this project

[laird]

In a philosophical sense, I agree (somewhat), but in a pragmatic sense I think you're wrong.

While people have certainly been programming mobile agents in many languages for a very long time, there's nothing wrong with implementing them in Java. Java is a fairly nice language with a good security model and portable bytecode. Having used both to write agents, I can say that it's not quite as nice for writing mobile agents as Telescript (the language that General Magic designed for implementing mobile agents), but it's not bad. Sure, SmallTalk or Lisp are simpler and cleaner in many ways, and Erlang, etc., have some nice, though somewhat esoteric advantages, but Java has the fairly reasonable advantages that it's a widely known and extremely well supported language.

And as for preferring declarative programming to procedural programming, well, all I can say is that different models suit different kinds of problems, and different kinds of programmers. Changing both programming languages and programming paradigms (i.e. procedural to declarative) and throwing mobile agents into the mix) is extemely challenging to a development team. Not that it can't be done, but it's way harder (for a large team) than just introducing mobile agents implemented in a language everyone knows. Take one step at a time, or you lose people. I know, back in the 80's I was on a number of large Smalltalk projects, and making the leap to OOP, Client/Server and learning Smalltalk all at once was a barrier than many engineers couldn't hurdle. Sure, the stars got it, and were amazingly productive, but everyone else was blocked.

That being said, if you have a small team of stars, and a project that doesn't require a larger team, go for it -- you may be extremely successful. But I don't think that makes anyone who decides to implement mobile agents in Java wrong, just a little less daring. :-)