NASA Goes SourceForge

refactorator writes "We have a lift-off! The NASA Ames Research Center has open sourced Java PathFinder , a JVM that is an explicit state software model checker, all written in Java. For the first time, the complete master development site of a live NASA software engineering project is hosted on SourceForge. Read the official press release for details. The team around John Penix, Willem Visser, and Peter Mehlitz fought long and hard to get the development hosted outside of NASA, to enable true collaborative software development. Now show the government that it works - join the fray. May Java PathFinder boldly go where no NASA program has gone before." (Both Slashdot and SourceForge are part of VA Software.)

Comments

NASA has been on sourceforge before

[Filiks]

NASA WorldWind has been on SourceForge since September. Though most development happens over IRC.

Re:What The Hell Is That?

[eviltypeguy]

Leave off the quotes in your query and the first hit that comes back is a pretty good definition I'd say.

Or just look for "explicit state software model checking".

Not First App OS

[millahtime]

This is not the first app that NASA has open sourced, just the first one on sf.net. NASA has an OS website at
http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/

Re:Why isn't more government stuff open source?

[DrZZ]

Read up on the Bayh-Dole Act. In the US at least, inventions created using government funds (either grants or contracts) by default are owned and administered by the grantee or contractor, not the government. I laugh when people talk about the drug companies "stealing" government funded university research because the universities are the most agressive people out there patenting research and trying to hit drug companies up for big bucks to license the patents. Work done by actual government employees can certainly be patented, but obviously in that case the patent is owned by the government. Work done by government employees can NOT be copyrighted, which can lead to problems when trying to get government involved in GPL'd projects. NASA has a lot of contractors that that are still looked on as "NASA", so I don't know whether these guys are government or contractors.

Re:This isn't possible is it?

[GileadGreene]

The halting problem basically says that you can't write a program that will determine whether or not any arbitrary program will halt. It doesn't say that you cannot determine the halting properties of a specific program or class of programs. Java Pathfinder works. Model-checking in general works, and has been used for many years in many applications. Examples of model-checkers that have seen fairly wide use include (off the top of my head) SPIN, SMV, FDR, TLC, and Verisoft.

Re:Hmm... This is new.

[apilosov]

Note the *requested* not *required*.

The above clause is strictly optional and does not conflict with GPL in any way.

Re:Hmm... This is new.

[jpenix]

That part is a "request" - it does not invalidate the license to not register.

Re:Hmm... This is new.

[Mmm coffee]

You are correct, I admit my mistake and my apologies.

Re:Hmmmm

[AKAImBatman]

A few points:

1. Most of the "management" apps are written by people who are not experts in the Java language, thus tend to fubar it pretty well. This is changing, but slowly.

2. Sun is aware of the remote X issues. This is something they are being slow about addressing, but I believe 1.5 should show a marked performance improvement.

3. P2P programs tend to eat a lot of system resources during operation. This doesn't have so much to do with Java as in the way they are designed.

4. The majority of "good" Java software is outside of the area of Desktop applications. Desktop is still an underdeveloped area for Java.

5. Java programs will always take more resources on a mainstream machine. This is due to the fact that the JVM replicates a lot of the functionality of the OS. In instances where the JVM *is* the OS (e.g. embedded development) the difference in resources is insignificant.

Here are a few examples of Java Desktop programs that do their job extremely well:

Azureus
Wurm Online
JGoodies JDiskReport
DataDino Database Explorer
A few games I wrote for a 4k contest.

Re:It's not legal

[DrZZ]

The federal govenrment can't hold a copyright.

That's not precisely true according what I read in the US Code. Work done by federal employees certainly can not be copyrighted, but work done by others can be assigned to the federal government. Of course the specifics of who did this work and whether it qualifies as a work of the government (ie how DID they get around this) are something I would like to see clearly explained

Re:Hmm... This is new.

[electricdream]

It's free software according to the OSI

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/nasa1.3.php