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NASA Prepares to Open Source Code
comforteagle writes "According to this story at O'Reilly, NASA is looking for approval for their own open source license. The NASA submitter (lawyer of course) states that none of the current licenses meet their needs, but more interesting is that NASA needs a license at all. It makes one wonder what we, and other space agencies, might see coming out off NASA. It's also nice to see code that taxpayers paid for anyway being released for their use too. There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software. X Prize participants maybe?"
I thought all goverment programs were automatically uncopyrighted, not even public domain? Like they were completely outside of the copyright system.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software.
Absolutely there is. I can think of a number of potential applications of NASA image processing software to our research in neuroscience. Right now, we are having to either purchase code written for the GIS markets to do what we want, custom write routines in a language such as IDL, or get some computer science graduate students to work for us custom creating code. We are doing the first two and I am going to start recruiting CS grad. students next week, but things might go a lot faster if we already had a source code base to start with.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
It should be public domain so everyone can use it. If they like just restrict it to US companies but their should be no requirement to share the changes that are made because NASA is a taxpayer support org.
It's sad that NASA won't simply release the code into the public domain.
I have been pwned because my
Jeez, who's next, Microsoft?
The coolest voice ever.
I am most having got need for rocket open source. Now do open source me want for get. Sincerely, North Korean Military
Given the ancient hardware nasa still seems to be using on their machines (still essentially powered by '91 era powerpc's) i doubt that the source will be THAT impressive. Maybe i'm way off base though. Most of what they use is probably still some of the original stuff used on them. However, i'm not bashing on nasa here, i'm thinking that some people with some top of the line embeddable hardware will come up with some pretty slick ways of doing things now... I think this is the first step in a need that Nasa is finally getting a clue about....that is, getting out of the early 80's in their space program...
Well, Microsoft already did so earlier today, so NASA is a bit behind the times for this one. [wink]
John Carmack could do it. A little upgrade to the equipment, and the space shuttles might be powerful enough to play Doom.
Well, if I used it, I could then use the excuse that I'm a Rocket Scientist :)
I've built this six-wheeled golf cart in my back yard, and I was hoping to find a good OS for it!
This side up.
with me being in another country,would i be able to use the [OPEN] source code for my government space agency? Would the US govt permit that, nasa being a govt agency. ;-)
They would probably only release code which would not benefint most people don't you think?
Lord of the Binges.
From http://news.osdir.com/article448.html
Open Source: NASA's Open Source Licensing
Posted Feb 12, 2004 - 11:45 AM
Bryan A. Geurts, Patent Attorney, for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has submitted a first draft of their NASA OPEN SOURCE AGREEMENT to the Open Source Initiative for approval. (No link available at publishing time)
More interesting is that fact that they are looking for such approval. The obvious question is what will be released to the community and other space agencies once the license is approved to meet the open source definition.
A copy of the draft submission can be found on the Open Source Initiative mailing list here.
Bryan states in his submission that "None of these agreements suffice on its own or combined together for purposes of NASA for the following reasons:
i. NASA legal counsel requires that all NASA releases of software include indemnification of the U.S. Government from any third party liability arising from use or distribution of the software. See 4.B.
ii. Federal Statute mandates that the U.S. Government can only be held subject to United States federal law. See 5.C.
iii. NASA policy requires an effort to accurately track usage of released software for documentation and benefits realized?purposes. See 3.F.
iv. Federeal Statutes and NASA regulations requires a prohibition in NASA contracts against representations by others that may be deemed to be an endorsement by NASA. See 3.E.
v. Because it is important that each of the aforementioned clauses be a part of each open source agreement relating to NASA released software, the proposed agreement must mandate that distribution and redistribution of the software be done under the aegis of NOSA (mandatory domination similar to GPL). See 3.A."
A copy of the proposed license follows:
NASA OPEN SOURCE AGREEMENT VERSION 1.1
THIS OPEN SOURCE AGREEMENT ("AGREEMENT") DEFINES THE RIGHTS OF USE,
REPRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, MODIFICATION AND REDISTRIBUTION OF CERTAIN
COMPUTER SOFTWARE ORIGINALLY RELEASED BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
AS REPRESENTED BY THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
("NASA"). ANYONE WHO USES, REPRODUCES, DISTRIBUTES, MODIFIES OR
REDISTRIBUTES THE SUBJECT SOFTWARE, AS DEFINED HEREIN, OR ANY PART
THEREOF, IS, BY THAT ACTION, ACCEPTING IN FULL THE RESPONSIBILITIES
AND OBLIGATIONS CONTAINED IN THIS AGREEMENT.
NASA Original Software Designation:
NASA Original Software Title:
User Registration requested, please visit http://www.
NASA Point of Contact for Original Software:
1. DEFINITIONS
A. "Contributor" means NASA, as the developer of the Original
Software, and any entity that makes a Modification.
B. "Covered Patents" mean patent claims licensable by a Contributor
that are necessarily infringed by the use or sale of its Modification
alone or when combined with the Subject Software.
C. "Display" means the showing of a copy of the Subject Software,
either directly or by means of an image, or any other device.
D. "Distribution" means conveyance or transfer of the Subject
Software, regardless of means, to another.
E. "Larger Work" means computer software that combines Subject
Software, or portions thereof, with software separate from the Subject
Software that is not governed by the terms of this Agreement.
F. "Modification" means any alteration of, including addition to or
deletion from, the substance or structure of either the Original
Software or Subject Software, and includes derivative works, as that
term is defined in the Copyright Statute, 17 USC 101. However, the
act of including Subject Software as part of a Larger Work does not in
and of itself constitute a Modification.
G. "Original Software" means the computer software first released
under this Agreement by NASA with NASA designation and
entitled , including
source code, object code and accompanying docum
Huh?
NASA's first "A" stands for "Aeronatics", and that's only part of their name. Lots of applications can be thought of. For instance, the source for their 3d ranging application would be very beneficial to many people. I mean, the rovers are able to compute their surroundings in 3d using only 2 cameras. The degree of success and repeatability of these 3d measurements far exceeds any other available 3d ranging software. This type of code could be useful for anyone who wants to make a 3d model of something using only a camera and some precise alignment. Indeed, JPL has a lot of experience in robotics and the gain in knowledge when such code is released is sure to be great for anyone in the field of robotics. Even the Darpa robot competition would be different with such technology freely available.
what we, and other space agencies,
;-)
Is this guy referring to Slashdot?
I have discovered a truly marvelous
since nasa is gov. funded, this could be great for opensource. May open the eyes of officials that OSS is NOT "un-American" as SCO suggests
We can have more success at landing spacecraft on Mars. At least the metric/imperial error would have been caught before it went to alpha...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Not likely to be very workable. NASA can't release a lot of stuff because of ITAR restrictions. The US of A treats most space related items as being ITAR Restricted.
For those asleep at the keyboard, ITAR is International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
For example, check out Flight Linux:
http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/
You'll note that even though required by the GPL, NASA refuses to release the sources because of ITAR prohibitions.
Move along, there is nothing to see here.
Hmm, how about the image enhancement software for CCD's that they've been sitting on for years...
Looking through their list of "problems", seems to be mostly self-imposed or over-exaggerated problems. Like indemnifying the US government- the GPL already -does- that...then there's the bit about not endorsing things(which explains the proliferation of "space" pens and "developed by NASA" foam pillows/mattresses).
Please help metamoderate.
Darwin Award, maybe?
They won't touch the existing licenses because they are not affected by locality. I'd imagine this will suffer from the usual export restriction bollocks that the US Government likes so much.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I hope NASA gets their Open Source software out soon. I'm getting thoroughly frustrated trying to write an OS for my planetary rover.
I suspect that they have some really good modeling of orbital mechanics that could be used in some games.
Mars Rover Security system..
;-)
no more dog poop on the lawn
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I've been itching to get my hands on NASA's Photoshop filters since 1969!
sure I'm interested in seeing the code to a space shuttles OS...
but I doubt the code to any really useful stuff like the image stabilization software VISAR will be available.
This was originally developed while he (Gary Riley) worked for NASA at the Johnson Space Cener. It was available in source form since before I started working with it in 1993.
I completely agree.
It would be flat out wrong for tax supported software to be made and then not be able to be used by businesses that helped pay for the software.
Nasa seemed happy releasing code under the GPL for quite some time, and I find it odd that that is changing now.
Ever use a network card under Linux, much of the networking code came from NASA (mostly from Donald Becker).
Still dreaming about that Beowulf cluster? That also came out of NASA.
Perhaps the lawyers felt left out, so they're trying to do thier part and look useful. Why would NASA find that a license that has served them well for years needs replacing? Any lawyers opine on the new license yet?
Read, L
I have always wanted to initate my own "ROLL" program....
As an enginneer who once worked for NASA (through a contractor), I can tell you that there are many pieces of software created at NASA which are useful outside of the space program.
This might be one possible use for such a thing.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I get the impression that NASA develops a lot of software for image processing. I'm picturing some really powerful GIMP plug-ins... "Make Mars Red", "Color Galaxy", "Add UFO"....
"but more interesting is that NASA needs a license at all" A political system relies on a set of rules that applies to EVERYONE . If these rules are no obeyed, even if it is the government itself the system falls apart. But even if they did not require one it would still be bad publicity since they would then be thought of as "Big Brother". (-5 flamebait here i come!!!)
For those wondering about the software produced, they employ folks from all branches of knowledge. Except finance, me thinks.
There is a joke in here somewhere about the esa using the code to actually get a lander on Mars, in one piece. Ok, that was uncalled for.
"If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways" -- hhgg
Daddy says that I can't have the new 240GB hard disk till I fill my current 80GB one. Perhaps NASA could help me!
My other dog is a Wienerschnitzel.
It would be cool to see other nations being able to make useful progress in non-weapons science, being able to actively thank and give tribute to NASA advancements along the way.
I just hope the sharing might keep going if it starts being seen as a good thing. For some reason, I get the impression we'll get some crazy results too, like French agencies stipulating that no documents may be translated to non-French and still be visible in France. Still, it's definetly problems I'd rather have to deal with then not.
Ryan Fenton
Release skeleton code to the public in an open source license format, allow the public to flesh out, debug, etc. then NASA applies to ongoing program. Public feels a part of the program (greater enthusiasm) and NASA likely gets better code on an extremely reasonable budget. Win/Win for geeks on both sides of the fence.
As someone who's used this code, let me say:
HAHAHAHAHAHA
yeah, but the loopholes are so large that NASA fell through without anyone realizing it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
30 years from now, Man finally lands on Mars, and finds one of the 2010 batch of rovers, and, spelled out in its tire tracks...
"FIRST POST!"
Sick of the world leeching of the NASA's freeware. There should be fees for any photos and science distributed internationally
After reading slashdot today, it's pretty apparent that the GNU movement will 'free' your source code if you don't beat them to it!
Incidentally, my previous comment and its parent may be the two most tenuously-related comments i've ever seen... other than purely random ones. Lordy.
Molecularize your favorite beer without leaving your computer!
Woohoo!
Seastead this.
For over 30 years NASA code was available through a program called COSMIC which was administered at the University of Georgia.
http://www.cosmic.uga.edu/
In fact for awhile they operated out of one of the many buildings previously occupied by the 40 Watt Club
Since 1998 the code has been available through the Open Channel Foundation
http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/cosmic/
If you're refering to Maestro, that is not the code I was refering to. If you look on this page, you will see this picture, which shows some pretty darn good 3d processing for only using a few still cameras! And if you look here, you will find this picture which shows a representation of what the Spirit rover's software uses to find its own way, without need of constant instruction from Earth. Pretty good software, if you ask me! The public Maestro program is pretty slow, but so is Java in general for high-performance applications. Maestro doesn't actually generate the 3d range information from the raw images, it just displays it (and apparently is used to figure out the rover's schedule of stuff to do).
If we keep working on this independently, we will have a much harder time of accomplishing our goals than we will if we all work together. But like i said, its not likely to happen. not only will the US want to keep the upper hand in everything, but there is the chance that the code could be used by the wrong countries for malicious purposes - or even possibly independent terrorists. 9/11 #2 anyone? It may be far-fetched, but i'm sure the authorities are taking stuff like that into consideration, because once released the code cannot be unreleased. If only the different countries could for once look for the common good of all the world and work on a collective space program...
the source for their 3d ranging application would be very beneficial to many people. I mean, the rovers are able to compute their surroundings in 3d using only 2 cameras. The degree of success and repeatability of these 3d measurements far exceeds any other available 3d ranging software.
Are you certain of this?
MER's stereo imaging and navigation software is indeed well made. Still, I suspect it's incorrect to claim that it is the best ever written. Stereo imaging and 3-D structure from motion are very well established fields, and improvement is ongoing. It would probably be straightforward for you to find some recent conference papers and code up something in MATLAB that works better than the rover's flight software.
The quality of the 3d ranging results from Mars are impressive, but for more reasons than you might suspect. I spent summer 2002 interning at JPL. One day, Mark Maimone, the MER mobility software engineer, mentioned to me that images of Martian terrain (with scattered rocks, etc.) are just about mathematically optimal for stereo ranging. (He wrote his thesis on this stuff.) On Mars, it's easy to find correlations between pixel patterns in images. Now imagine how well it would work if the robot were staring at a blank wall--no vision algorithm can handle that!
So--don't think that the success of the imaging is just the well-made software.
JPL has a lot of experience in robotics and the gain in knowledge when such code is released is sure to be great for anyone in the field of robotics.
True, to a point. Bear in mind that while JPL does work on novel robotics research, they're also extremely concerned about preserving expensive, hard-to-replace robot systems. As a result, a lot of the software is based on well-established systems that, in the research world, have been surpassed a while ago. The rover autonomous navigation software, for example, is related to navigation software written here at Carnegie Mellon some four or five years ago.
Furthermore, a lot of the research advances made by JPL are presented at conferences and published in journals. It's not like they work in isolation and keep everything quiet. In fact, some of my fellow grad students work on large projects alongside JPL researchers and researchers at other institutions. So, in an academic sense, there's already a lot of sharing going on.
--Tom
MAN SHOOTS ROVER!
First Spirit, second Opportunity, and now free software from NASA for the masses! Huge kudos go to you, my friends.
however when will this be made available and what code will be made available. I mean if we are looking at code thats 15 years old, alot of that code would have already been created by the public and thus already in use. Or will this make any code that is even currently being used available to the public? I'd imagine that alot of software NASA use would be secured under top level agreements so obviously not everything will be made available...
Why should corporations be able to steal code funded by the public? If they want to benefit from public knowledge, they shoupld be prepared to give something back. I don't pay taxes to subsidize Microsoft.
Not as I understand this. (IANAL, of course.) Look on debian legal somewhere for discussion of export restrictions and the GPL. Maxima delt with this, and I suspect it won't be the only program to deal with it.
Export restrictions don't need to be part of the license to apply - they apply regardless of whether or not the software license says they apply. Licenses sometimes make explicit notice of the fact they do or might apply, but it is the regulations themselves that determine the issue. If you read the license proposed, all that NASA is saying is export restrictions might trump anything in the license, and they aren't granting an export license here. That applies for ANY software license, including BSD, GPL, whatever. It's the software itself that decides the issue.
Open source has been lucky to dodge this issue (I imagine its being international from the start helped!) although crypto software has had some very close calls. The internet and portability makes the export control of any software available publically a joke, of course, but the law isn't going to concede that point. NASA is practicing a typical CYA move, so if some s**t hits the fan they don't get put in the hot seat. That's all it means, and that's all it can mean. So I wouldn't worry.
actually many of the technologies are already well established in other fields. JPL and NASA many times use existing technologies and customize it for thier needs.
True. Having now RTFA, it seems that the focus of their concern is "juris-my-diction" of the license. Code export being a seperate issue altogether.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
bussines can use GPL'd software, just look at all that gnumakefiles in windows source :P
We should just build an open source rocket for fun and profit. Imagine an international team of researchers and just ordinary people collaborating on a project without any corporate or government intervention. This is stretching it but I think open source collaborative work could be applied to non-computer projects.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Indeed, a lot of sharing IS going on! In fact, I myself have applied for a summer internship at JPL (and other places at NASA) for summer 2004 (I'm crossing my fingers). Even at my own college (i.e. university), we have a few NASA grants and research going on, even though we have a relatively small physics department (about a dozen physics majors per grade). As I mention in another post, Maestro is a publicly available version of NASA software for the rovers.
That being said, you do have a point as far as 3d imaging. However, I have looked far and wide for something of the calibre of the rovers' software for 3d ranging. The ability to calculate the 3d range info even free of all human intervention is proof of the robustness of the code, however. There is a lot of effort needed to convert research code into an integral part of an robust interplanetary exploration platform. Anyways, I appreciate the insight you have brought and you seem to have some reasonable experience in dealing with NASA in research projects.
When I first read about goto staements being harmful when dinsaurs ruled the earth, NASA code was often referred to by my betters as horribly written "spaghetti code". I am no programmer but I would like to see some of this code to see just how bad it supposedly is. Some of it did get us to the moon didn't it?
All public-domain.
Can someone explain to me why software written by NASA, a government agency funded by the public, would not by definition belong in the public domain?
...each Recipient, upon receipt of the Subject
Software, is requested to register with NASA by visiting the following
website...
I doubt this statement satisfies the open-source definition. I am *certain* that it doesn't satisfy the Debian Free Software definition, because it fails both the "desert island" and the "chinese dissident" tests.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Because the 2 cameras are in a known co-ordinate system, it's not at all hard to get 3D info from the images.
If the images were taken with one camera in diferent positions, it would be impressive.
Every day in my job I use these (and better) systems to "3D scan", and the stuff coming from the rovers is not all that great.
The actual resolution is about +-10mm (at best). I get +- 0.5 mm daily with my Minolta 910 daily and have gotten +- 0.05mm with it.
When a remote rover can 3D scan a 500m range with an accuracy of +-0.5mm, I will be impressed.
When it can transmit that much data back to earth I will really be impressed.
NASA made their AI engine available in the public domain in 1986. It's called CLIPS. It was written in C, was very portable, and very fast. In fact it's still being updated. The funny thing is that it did what other companies were charging $10,000 for.
So this is nothing new for NASA. Maybe it's just been a long time since they've done it. Technically, all non-classified government funded software is supposed to be made available in the public domain.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Why isn't all content and source code paid for by tax payers freely available? For instance, you have to pay to get the GIS database available from the USGS. All the source code from every government agency should be free as well. Also, why does NPR keep their content locked behind Real servers? I could go on. Am I missing something here? Shouldn't all this be free?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Due to a so called "off-by-1" bug, microsofts code has gone open source first. But who cares?
bash$
We are, of course, refering to an autonomous robotic vehicle that can actually rely on these 3d rangings for navigation without intervention from NASA. It's not really that possible to have a 3d ranging resolution greater than the resolution of the 2d images (.5 mm accuracy with a 500m range is clearly not reasonable). The ability of the rover (and other software) to construct a meaningful 3d environment (not with a blue-screen or any other such tricks like manually selecting common points in tough parts of images) using real pictures is on a higher level than 3d scanning software, not to mention the concerted effort that NASA has put toward this software. For a project costing the better part of a billion dollars, JPL is going to be sure to create some very high-quality and very rigorously tested code.
(expanding a bit on my earlier comment)
I've read the license quickly and I can definitely say that section 3F will cause problems. Requiring registration does not meet the open-source definition, nor the Debian free software guideline. It discriminates people who either 1) do not have access to the Internel (the "desert island" test) 2) people who can't say they are using the software (the "chinese dissident" test). It also prevents any inclusion in a distribution because it implies that merely buying a Linux distribution that includes the software requires you to register it. If you forget, you are breaking the law (just imagine if all software was released under this license).
Last thing, by requiring registration, this license seems to cover the *use* of the software, going even further that what copyright law requests. The GPL gives you rights that copyright law alone does not give you (e.g. right to redistribute the code), but it does not *remove* rights (line the right to use the software without telling anyone). This also means that to be valid, the license would actually have to be signed (hence it becomes a contract). The GPL (or other free software licenses) does not require that since it only gives you additional rights (if you don't agree to the GPL, you still have all rights provided by copyright laws).
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I'm from Canada. I think we fall under the domestic category (just like we do in other matters).
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Somehow, with governments conducting subterfuge, assassination, and starting wars on other countries with little or no evidence of wrongdoing, that whether software should be 'Public Domain' is not very important.
Whats next?
GPL Martian Lander?
Now we can make a 'Virtual Martian Lander' and add our own mods to it....
Sheeesh!
Examples I know of: NASA STEP Testbed, and Express Engine, though they're not the glamourous or sexy type of software most of you seem to be thinking of in this article. Not rocket or Mars-related, at least.
I'm not really impressed with the possibility of seeing some code from NASA. Sure, it'll be sweet and have some interesting applications, but I'd MUCH rather see code from the NSA!
The software used and written by NASA doesn't necessarily have to be some esoteric space-only software - NASA is a huge organisation with a lot of administrative overhead. Perhaps they have some good payroll software or project management systems or something that a lot more people could use than some rocket guidance programs.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
When I build my own space shuttle, at least I don't have to write software for it.
There's a group in the Orbiter space flight simulator community who wants to write a working version of the DSKY Apollo flight computer for Orbiter. While not source code per se, there are some who want to write a virtual machine in C++ to run the DSKY binary code.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I can offer a wee little bit of factual knowledge on this, since I worked at NASA for ten weeks on a school project, developing software.
:)
There's software that controls space ships and stuff, yes, but there's a whole lot more, too. And a lot of this software is pretty mundane. I personally worked on software for maintaining a web-based help system, written in ColdFusion. And I assure you there are not triple redundancies built in.
There's a lot of interesting software being written there, there's a lot of run-of-the-mill software being developed there. Just like any other business.
That said, they have some really cool stuff going on there too. I hope we get some of that.
There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software.
I used to work for the USDA in an applied ethology laboratory, we were studying the cognitive levels of the pig. We were using a software game that was written in Q-Basic by Nasa for testing monkeys and providing in-flight enrichment and stimulation for them as well.
Arguably, we should have access to it since we paid for it, but the authors have the copyright.
;-)
So if I'm not a U.S. taxpayer, can I not access this software?
Trying to have everybody chip in can be a problem though - take the ISS for example. Because we have to keep it in a particular orbit to satisfy the Russians, it's useless as a jumping off point to the Moon, Mars, etc.
What a big waste of money that was.
I belong to the ______ generation.
Here are a couple of resources which might be interesting. The first, a software crew They Write the Right Stuff. It's just over seven years old but it's a fascinating read about extraordinary expectations, even if it were to have appeared in a current inssue. It would be very interesting to see an updated version. Secondly, here's a site which some might be interested in (NASA's Software Engineering Laboratory).
"Sir, we seem to have lost control of the rovers"
"Lost contact man, what do you mean?"
"Well sir, it's like we can look but we can't touch!"
"And what do you see?"
"It's hard to tell at this point, but first the rovers appeared to play a game of pong with a mars rock, and now they appear to be writing "Chris loves Jane" in the dust, with letters large enough to be viewed by a common telescope."
"It's those da*mn blinkenlights people..."
It depends highly on the application of the shared information.
I remember a story (and I unfortunately don't really have enough concrete facts about it to Google it) that involved the development of a Chinese missile. China subcontracted out some of the components, including to several companies in Europe. China was having a terrible time getting their missile to work properly, and several of the engineers from one of the subcontractors discovered the problem was in the flight control software. They pointed this out to the program's directors, and the problem was fixed. However, since the flight control software was not part of that company's contract, the engineers got into huge trouble with their country for giving away "national secrets" to China.
Could open sourced software fall into the same category? Could something seemingly innocuous (such as automated satellite image analysis code, for example) be seen by governments as "national secrets?" I'm all for NASA releasing its code, and I would hate to see the best stuff stifled because of nationalistic paranoia.
By the way, I heard the story from a professor of Aerospace Engineering who is always a reliable source of information, so I have no doubt as to its accuracy. However, I wish I had a Google link to post here so you don't all think I'm a crazed lunatic.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
If we give it to network broadcasters, maybe they can process their television shows, to enhance^H^H^H^H^H^H^H blur inadvertant nipple showings due to costume malfunctions.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It would be hard to have more success.
The US is five out of six landing spacecraft on Mars:
Viking 1: Success
Viking 2: Success
Pathfinder: Success
Polar Lander: Failure
Spirit: Success
Opportunity: Success
The only US lander that failed was the super-cheap (by Mars mission standards) Mars Polar Lander.
Why do you think that?
Tney're all available to the public domain!
Take a look at the notes on image reuse on JPL's rover website, for instance.
This is probably the package you are looking for: Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers. It's been distributed freely for many years, and is, indeed, public domain. It's funded by NASA for use by NASA-funded researchers and the planetary science community in general.
Note, Isis 3.0 has not been released yet, look for the beta in coming months - look at Isis 2.1 for the stable release. Download/Install instructions are on this page: Isis 2.1 Installation Guide.
Automatic mosaicking is generally done using the spacecraft positioning information. Automatic registration? It doesn't exist (yet). Registration involves varying levels of human intervention, and when some level of automation is achieved, it's mission-specific and under special circumstances. Isis is primarily a cartographic package - IDL is generally used for statistical work.
Another image processing package that's public domain is USGS MIPS. It's a (non-NASA) terrestrial image processing package that evolved from the same roots as Isis, so you'll find it has many of the same capabilities.
I don't know what other NASA packages there might be out there like this, if there are any. I'll ask around.
Yes, but much of the work done at NASA isn't done by an "officer or employee of the United States Government", but contractors.
The contracts aren't for the software, but for the resulting space technologies... so the codes written by the contractors to help build the technology isn't owned by NASA.
I'm not certain what you mean by images... but if you mean the pathfinder images, you should know that JPL isn't a government lab, but an affiliate of NASA. Marshall is a NASA lab and is managed by NASA civil-servants, JPL is managed by Caltech.
NASA goes open source and I find out that they have a newsfeed!
Yes, I did maintain legacy code at Nasa for a living.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
- You turn it into an Open Source project,
- A software house picks it up creates a derivative product to sell without releasing the code and being forced to share their work with the world (e.g. Global Mapper derived from USGS dlgv32), and
- Another company packages it "as is" (maybe with a nice installer, or ported to another platform), and the price of a license buys you tech support, training, and/or printed documentation.
Freedom of choice is good, including the freedom to choose to share or not share the work you derived from public domain software.I was under the impression that code created by a government agency that was to be released to the public always had to be entered into the public domain. IIRC this was the case with the Enhanced Machine Controller project from the NIST. The idea is that anything the the United States Govenrment creates is owned by by the public as the US Govenrment is "of the people, by the people and for the people"
Can anyone comment on this? IANAL.
For many agencies, like NASA, there are national security concerns. Anything that might make it easier for a hostile country to design, test, build and use, military hardware, is going to be closely scrutinized before release to the public. Do you want NASA to give away its latest and greatest rocket guidance software to anyone that asks for it?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
My first reaction was along the lines of "hunh?? Is he kidding"
I could easily see a lot of interesting things coming out of NASA labs and projects...
- the rover autonav software could probably find a lot of uses in various areas of robotics..
- Imaging... anybody have even a rough estimate of the number of images that nasa has collected ?? I don't even have to look to be able to guess that they have stuff for cataloging, anotating, organizing arranging, regestering, color correcting, etc.etc.etc.
- GIS systems
- simulations of all sorts
- They probably have software for doing orbital mechanics work (both rough and fine) down to a finer art than most of us thought possible.
- there are probably aeronautical engineers who would slobber over work that they didn't even know that NASA had put together.
- We might even get some interesting open-source project planning and communication software out of them.
- sound filtering systems... and weak signal recovery in general
- Some stuff, although not strictly useful right now is likely to be of some historical interest (if they can still recover it from backups).
If we got full access to all of their software and it was properly categorized, I'm guessing that almost every slashdotter would find something in there that was at least somewhat interesting.Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The reality of the situation is, the iss orbit is not where it is to 'satisfy the Russians', it's to satifsy the laws of physics. There are two ways to achieve an on orbit rendevous, the first is to go charging up to orbit, and then later maneuver the orbit to match that of the target. This can be hugely wasteful in terms of energy expended in maneuvering. The second method is to wait for the target object to be on an overhead pass, so that a pure ballistic trajectory can take you directly from launch to the on orbit rendevous. This is the most efficient method of launch, allows the maximum payload delivery for a given launch vehicle.
The ISS orbit is determined by simple ballistics. It's where it is to provide maximum availability of direct launch windows from the Kennedy Space Center AND the Balkinor launch facilities. With shuttles all parked in the garage, I suspect there's a lot of folks at nasa today that are quite thankful for the decision to place ISS in an orbit that provides equal accessibility for the Soyuz and Progress vehicles. With no shuttle missions bringing up the groceries, it's very important that those progress launches pack in every possible pound of payload when they do get sent up.
Like everything else in life, ISS decisions are often a big compromise, most compromises are driven by physics, others by politics. To many uninformed folks, much of the decision making driven by physics appears to be political, because they dont understand the reality of the situation. Orbit selection for ISS was not chosen to 'satisfy the russians', but to optimize availability of resources in many scenarios. Lack of shuttle availability was one of those scenarios, and today it's reality. The ISS orbit is skewed a little from optimum shuttle inclinations due to the lifting capacities of the progress vehicles. With 20/20 hindsight, this was a brilliant decision. At the time, it appeared political to americans. It wasn't, it was driven by the need to have contingencies available in the event of prolonged periods of unavailble shuttles. We are currently a year into one of those periods.
This software is copyright (c) ____, ____________. It will enter the public domain in ____, or sooner if a separate announcement is made, and may thereafter be safely used without restriction.
Distribution in source or binary form will require separate written permission from ____________; or alternatively is permitted subject to the following conditions:
- The code you distribute as your own work must be modified beyond recognition.
- The names of the author(s) and the ____________ name may not be used in connection with any software you develop, except by separate written permission.
- You may examine the file formats used by this software in order to create interoperable software.
If any warranty was made by the author or vendor in respect of the original software, it shall not be held to apply to anything you create or distribute.Of course, it doesn't give away anything that isn't an inalienable statutory right anyway: if you modify it beyond recognition then it's by definition a separate work, if you don't misappropriate the author's name you can't be sued, you are allowed by law to analyse file formats in order to create interoperable software, and any part of any licence that tries to deny you those rights is null and void.
This is awesome. I am *so* going to the moon after I get this off Bit Torrent and compile it.
Pathfinder software archive
CLIPS
: A Tool for Building Expert Systems. Maintained by Gary Riley.
fuzzyCLIPS
Some other NASA soft:
COBWEB/3 (ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov) ?
AUTOCLASS AutoClass is an unsupervised Bayesian classification system for independent data.
PRODIGY cs.cmu.edu Integrated Planning and Learning System
I'm sure their software is good, but it's not the best, by any means.
when can i start trawling for buffer overflows in hubbles code and format strings on the rover code?
(ok its java yeah yeah yeah)
Let's say you make an embedded OS.
With this OS you have a great TCP/IP small and fast. Better than BSD or anything open source.
You also have a small tight http server, ftp server, snmp stack blah blah.
Now you license your OS to companies. They are willing to pay X dollars for your OS, because of your great support, overall speed and quality of code. The less engineering work needed and quicker time to market makes paying the money a good deal.
Now, your company does pretty well, so you pay taxes to the government.
The government then takes this money and develops a tcp/ip stack(think a publicly funded college).
This tcp/ip is in some ways better than yours and in other ways worse. You take the best and incorparate it into your code.
If this code was GPL'd you couldn't do this. Public domain you could.
By making it GPL'd the company can't use the software in their product.
Therefore you are paying taxes, to pay for a product that you can't use. With public domain software(or BSD) everyone can use it.
I think, rather, you are just blinded by your hatred for MS.
Why is this flamebait, but my post agreeing with this, is insightful?
Granted, he uses a little less tact but still, -1 flamebait?
It occurs to me that since, as the poster pointed out, we tax payers are paying for the software, wouldn't it make sense for the government to open source all the software they have developped? At least software that isn't considered secret of some sort?
Think of the benefits to, not just the public, but to the agencies themselves. Every government project goes onto, say SourceForge. The company hired to write the software would do all the development on SourceForge. If other people are interested, they can get in on the testing and development. The government gets better software and the public gets to use it, and the contractor still gets paid. Everyone wins.
Here's another possible positive result: Many agencies within the government have software developped that it alsmost identical to software developped for other agencies (left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing stuff). It's possible that through open source, not only could more code sharing go on, but it might be possible for agencies to take an existing project, make a few changes, and have it fit their needs, further saving them money.
Anyway, I've never considered this before, but it seems to make a great deal of sense to me.
A rather simple point to make, but NASA as an organisation have a finger in most scientific pies. I've personally run into problems getting hold of NASA code before now (owing to the fact I'm based in Europe and thus my taxes never nominally went toward the development; which is the current state of play atm for non-Americans). This can only be a good thing for the international scientific community.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
If anyone uses an IBM architechture mainframe they may notice "HASP" cropping up a lot in printing etc. This is the "Huston Automated Spooler Program" it was developed for the moon program and is still the same code today.
Seriously, something like 8 years ago I was doing some work with a then-new thermal imaging system, running on an Unix / big-endian hardware platform. I needed to extract data from the images and had done so in the past with data sets collected and processed on dos & os/2.
On contacting the vendor for data formats etc I was told that a group at NASA was doing the same thing so I contacted them and they were able and willing to send me their sources. No license, no problem.
Honestly the results were pretty disappointing. The code was less well-done than what I'd written 2 years before and I didn't / don't consider myself to be all that strong a 'C' coder.
Now I've also seen some of their technology-access programs some of which were effectively free (beer sense for those who care) and programs which were arranged to recoup the costs of 'supporting' something for external release.
All code I've worked with on all of these bases was non-polished stuff, no or little cleanup around the typical hacks involved in in-house development. (i.e. it's great stuff and well suited for moving to open source)
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
How is it "stealing"? If it was released to the public, you can light your candle from it and the corporations can light their candles from it. You aren't robbed of light if someone else has it also. I think they should be able to do what they want with their copy. Or are you really just some sort of "IP" shill?
[
FORTRAN Lives !!!!!
NASA has one of the hottest FEA apps in existance. It would be nice if they would open source it instead of charging us $2000-$10000 per anum. After all, We the People paid for it, and we'd like to take delivery now.
For those whom feel that everything Nasa does is automatically non-copyright, the problem is that very few things that NASA has ever done are NASA exclusive. Almost all research is done by a University under a technology sharing arrangement. The copyright is held by the University in these cases.
I agree! It's especially important that the knowlege and insight you funded be open to companies in countries like India so that they have the expertise to compete for your Jobs.
That's a great use of your tax dollars.
while(landed) { roam_about(); }
There. Happy now?
Must-not-watch TV!
it ought to be good enough for NASA. /* pcnet32.c: An AMD PCnet32 ethernet driver for linux. */ /*
* Copyright 1996-1999 Thomas Bogendoerfer
*
* Derived from the lance driver written 1993,1994,1995 by Donald Becker.
*
* Copyright 1993 United States Government as represented by the
* Director, National Security Agency.
*
* This software may be used and distributed according to the terms
* of the GNU General Public License, incorporated herein by reference.
*
* This driver is for PCnet32 and PCnetPCI based ethercards
*/
There are ca 24 files or so with this notice in drivers/net.
So the NSA seems to be ok with sending out stuff without requiring users to register at a web site. It seems possible to me that NASA could figure this one out.
Many US Gov't agencies now support creation of GPL'ed code, including DOE and DOD (via DARPA at least).
This license looks like another case of NASA Not Invented Here at work.
ron
Go to Britain, and you'll see people wearing "I (airplane) NY" t-Shirts. Go to Socialist France, and you'll be spit upon by the unemployed. Go to Canada, and you'll be booed.
Maybe you would receive a warmer reception if you weren't wearing that bright Hawaiian shirt with a Panama hat dressed with a Bush Cheney '04 button.
=)
I saw a presentation by Jay Apt, one of the contributors/authors to the NatGeo "Orbit" book - that's copyrighted by NG as a work, but when Jay was giving his slide presentation, we weren't allowed to video the screen due to copyright restrictions. I was never clear on if these were his own photos outside of the NASA photos. NASA mission pics online, the classic lithos, etc are in the public domain as I understand it (try telling that to Kinko's, though), I had expected that what was taken on the mission would be also...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Anything from watch making, to watch repair.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
...and "Spirit" runs out of Flash-disk space. ffs someone get those programmers jobs where they don't have a billion dollar code-compile-debug cycle. Amen to more pairs of eyes.
I work at Johnson Space Center, developing software to assist in Shuttle and ISS mission planning. As interesting as the idea of opening up the source for NASA software may sound, if other programming projects are anything like the stuff I've been working on, you probably wouldn't want it.
Things like hardware cycles and adoption of new technologies tend to be be the norm, so you see things like mid-90's AIX workstations, X/Motif code, Ada, and Fortran that you thought had long since died. My group has recently been able to rewrite some of the more ancient stuff in Java, and gotten the powers that be to approve of switching the servers to Linux.
The applications themselves, that I've worked with anyway, are probably not of a lot of interest to most people either. Some examples:
Also, keep in mind that NASA contractors do competitive bids every couple of years to keep their work, and there is turf-guarding and infighting. If you are the only company that knows how software Foo works, that gives you a big advantage at getting the contract for it again next time. Sad, but the way business works, and until software decisions are made solely based on technical considerations, being the most skilled and professional organization won't always assure you of getting the job.
I simply cannot wait to get my hands on their english-to-metric conversion code! Oh... wait a minute...
"in an academic sense" is great and all, but those journals cost a fortune, as does attendance to most of those academic conferences.
Its one thing to be able to find the algorithms in an expensive journal, it's a completely different thing to be able to download the software off the internet.
float cm_to_inch_conversion(float x)
{
return (x * 2.54);
}
siggy played guitar
>but more interesting is that NASA needs a license at all.
Actually, if you want to let others use your code for free, or pay, you have to have a license. No one in their right mind would use non-licensed software: )
You leave yourself too open to [insert copyright, licensing peril here] that way.
>There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software.
How about a SICK space simulator... You could have the real software interfaces and behaviour in your game.
The control software could be adapted to almost anything. Since it is Nasa originated code, it is safe to assume it can be used in "mission critical" situations, such as auto manufacturing, life support machines, sensor arrays for super expensive, one-shot science experiments, etc. especially since NASA is probably the one who invented the term...
A lot of NASA's problems are related to physically engineered stuff, their software works pretty well. I know one of their programmers: ) It isn't always easy to read and modify.
Some software may be dependant on prohibitively expensive ASICs, so not all of it will be suitable for inexpensive applications.
l8,
AC
esr: "yes, I will approve your license, but only if I get a ride on your next rocket. Oh, and I get to take along a couple of my guns, too. Never know when somebody out there is going to try to hold you up."
Because the cameras are attached to the same armature that the enginers know the dimensions of
(distance from the centre of each ccd is known), there is actually not much work at all for software to fake out some 3D.
I'm not too sure how much you know about 3D scanning software or 3D scanning systems, but I've never used blue screens to do it.
Picking common points in 2 images is exactly how the software JPL uses does it.
The systems I use scan the actual surface, not interpret one from images.
Using photos to generate 3D surfaces would have to be one of the most rudimentiary and inaccurate ways to 3D scan an object. There are a multitude of other techniques that can scan - phase/frequency ultrasound, laser triangulation, white light projecttion etc.
Although, white light projection only works well in low light conditions.
Using "real photo's" is in no way on a higher level to real 3D scanning.
work in the 3D scanning industry, then you'll see what I mean.
Yes, but the reason that this technique is better isn't because it is technically superior, but because it is usable by anyone such regular cameras can be used. (Of course picking common points is what the JPL software does, but I was just saying that it isn't done manually like some other 3d modeling programs I've used.) Obviously this won't affect high resolution 3d scanning. This sort of technology has the possibility to bring 3d scanning to the masses. (think of cheap point-and-shoot cameras which are usable by anyone as compared to a manual professional SLR camera or any sort of studio camera) So, JPL's software won't have much of an impact on your field, but will have at least the possibility to be very influential in the amateur 3d modeling community once it is open source, not to mention robot hobbyists.
I have been wondering what this is all about, having worked at GSFC for some time. I believe that documents (including software) created by NASA cannot be copyrighted, since the U.S. government is not eligible to be a copyright holder under U.S. law (I am not a lawyer). In fact, for code created entirely by civil servants (i.e. NASA-created code) there is a clause thaty says "No copyright is claimed in the United States...", indicating that the work is in that case in the public domain.
The license might be valid for contractor-created code, but (as has been pointed out) the GPL serves pretty well. I (and many, many others) have been creating "NASA software" and distributing it under the GPL, BSD license, Perl Artistic license, and others for years. The main point of the NASA license appears to be to aid in tracking of the software and non-abuse of the NASA name. The former is probably better served by a polite request rather than a license requirement; and the latter appears to be a problem mainly for the paranoid minds of NASA's legal team.
It would be a real shame if NASA contracts and grants started requiring this license on any software developed under grant -- that would fuck up contributions to dozens of open-source projects that benefit mightily from NASA research.
Imagine if every patch a NASA-funded scientist submitted to (say) Perl had a NASA license attached rather than the Artistic License. That would certainly prevent such patches or contributions being included.
Copyright does not exist in a work created by the federal government, but certainly can exist, and be owned by the federal government, if created by third parties -- even if created for or on behalf of the government.