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Open Source Software In the Military
JohnMoD writes With the advent of forge.mil, etc. the military seems to be getting on board with free and open source software. A working group meeting is going to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, August 12-13, 2009. There's a pretty good lineup of speakers including a Marine from the Iraq-Marine Expeditionary Forces, who was on the ground and saw the agility open source gave to him and his soldiers. A number of OSS projects are going to be meeting there: Delta 3D, OpenCPI, FalconView, OSSIM, Red Hat, etc. Looks like there will be some good discussions."
See; with the military now realizing the destructive potential of OSS people hopefully now realize the true danger posed by this dangerous concept!
Cost: $325 for attendee
I'll wait for the transcripts, Slashdot follow up and Youtube videos. Thank-you-very-much.
is open source anarchy reinforced with military "intelligence".
It's good to know when your code is contributing in killing others!
Who are fighting in Iraq & Afghanistan.
There are soldiers from many other countries who are fighting right alongside the US Forces.
Personally, I regret the loss of the lives of any service personell regardless of which country they are from.
PLA Daily ("China Military Online") is brought to us by Apache, so it would appear that at least one military has already got on board with free and open source software. I'd guess that the PLA could deliver better coding value for money to the Pentagon than could KBR.
and do I honestly think I'll ever see any of this stuff?
Absolutely not. They have civilian contractors to do all the cool stuff. I'm a network administrator who is denied administrative rights. My MOS (job classification) is an E4 and out position. Basically I have no chance of attaining any leadership skills in my job. Big change from when I joined six years ago. I'm seriously considering leaving communications for something that I can actually advance in, even if I wouldn't be as happy in it, but I could be wrong about that.
This turned in to an off-topic rant. My bad.
Anyway, I'll be joining tomorrow when I can get access to a computer that I can use my ID card in. Until then, I'll just not be able to look around it and - most likely - correctly speculate what the program is like for a junior enlisted servicemember, even if they know Linux well.
I run Ubuntu skinned to look like a Mac on a PC. Go figure.
Anyone who doesn't regret the loss of lives of all soldiers no matter what country, should be dead.
Anyone that doesn't respect all lives should be killed.
Free as in speech.
Free as in beer.
Free as in free to blow the shit out of something.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
... the military seems to be getting on board with free and open source software.
Is this the end of the teenager on the basement that hacks the military, now that the military is going secure?
How will the future nerd teens entertain themselves???
OSS in miltary? GNU Rocket (http://rocket.sf.net)
Having worked for the Royal Dutch Navy for several years as a programmer and software architect, I'm impressed by their use of open source software on board their combat platforms. For instance, the Landing Platform Dock 2, HrMs Johann de Witt, uses GNU/Linux as a main component in the Combat Management System. Other platforms, including their submarines also uses various degrees of open source in combination with older proprietary systems.
I've been teaching Eclipse Plug-in and RCP development to US Military and Defense organizations and contractors, as well as for the Australian government, for the past 3 years.
As long as the open source product can be proven as a secure technology, I don't see why the government wouldn't adopt it, especially if there are little to no licensing fees for its use.
I know that a number of Navy scientists have scratched their heads regarding why the NMCI abomination used Windows rather than Linux on the desktop.
I wonder if they'll smarten up when they roll out NGEN, which will replace NMCI.
Anyone that doesn't respect all lives should be killed.
By someone who respects lives.
I tried to submit code. You have to get a $200 certificate and it has to be from symatec or one other. Forge.mil does not allow any of the cheap or free certificates companies. Screw em, I got better places to give away my time.
If anyone caught Gen. Patraeus's briefing last week, I forget where it was but it was a public briefing, he constantly referred to Microsoft. Usually, the phrasing went something like, "if Microsoft will allow this". I noted that several of his slides were a bit odd in that there were arrows that really pointed no where and had no information content that I could discern. In the Q&A afterward, he actually pointed out the MS person who helped him create the slides. That would explain the totally useless arrows. But I was struck that MS actually has a representative to help the brass do Powerpoint. Until that changes, DoD will always be enthralled by MS and their Powerpoint bulletpoints.
Just as a brief aside, there is a Stargate SG-1 episode where the General has been replaced by some other Air Force General and he calls O'Neill into his office to complain about the fonts and the fact that he'd prefer there be more bullet points in his report. The look on O'Neill's face was just too good.
Several years ago there was a series of conferences on F/OSS in government sponsored by George Washington University. There were several presentations made on use of F/OSS by DoD. They included the certification of F/OSS for use in command-control systems, the use of F/OSS in weapons systems, and other applications. Topics addressed included interpretation of terms of the GPL when F/OSS is used in systems for which DoD secrecy requirements apply to the software. (In that case, distribution within DoD and its contractor community is treated as internal to the user and not subject to general disclosure.)
The conferences included numerous presentations about F/OSS is government, including health care and a wide variety of other areas. DoD was just as active as other agencies in using it.
It is sad to see that being supportive of one's country is now regarded as troll-ish on Slashdot.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Is this some elaborate plot to kill everyone who respect lives ?
Slipping shoelaces ?
I never get to comment on /. stories but this is relevant to my interests.
I didn't know FalconView was open souce (or at least moving to open source). Here is the link if Google failed you:
http://www.falconview.org/
I would really love to hear your opinion about the other Royal (UK) navy's use of Windows on Destroyers and Nuclear submarines and even (kind of) bragging about it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/windows_for_warships_hits_type_23s/
I mean, if it is not non ethical or anything else stops you.
What is your guess? Do they use Windows clients to a real operating system like UNIX or it is actually pure Windows? What would Dutch army/ask say if you went crazy and proposed using Windows replacing *NIX? They would sure do a triple background check on you right?
But i signed up for applications like this when i agreed open source was a terrific achievement for the community. war is a terrible application for something so geared toward the greater good, but freedom as in speech means some are bound to say things others dont like.
I can only hope open source can lead us away from wars entirely some day.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm with FurQ on this sort of issue(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_aU3TeDMnE/)
"you can't kill everybody, because you wouldn't have anybody left to respect..."
apologies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_aU3TeDMnE
Al: Uh-oh, quick! Should we use gnuke, knuke, or just bare-bones nuke?
Bob: Ah, definitely not knuke, it screws up at least half of the commands it sends to nuke. Maybe gnuke, it's at least a competent front-end, but it's missing a bunch of the functionality of nuke -- the dev got bored and was pulled onto another project. But the command-line for nuke is so obtuse that it will take two or three tries just to get the command right, and those first two bad commands might be worse than not using it at all. Of course, nobody has what you would call real-world experience with any of them . . .
Al: Ah sh*t, too late anyway.
Sorry, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the gnuke tag on the story.
"Basically I have no chance of attaining any leadership skills"
I fear that you don't understand what "leadership" is. If you wish to learn about leadership, and you are not learning, that is your failure, not the failure of the military, the boy scouts, an employer, or even your parents. I would ask first, how many courses are you enrolled in? If you answer "none", then it is obvious that you DON'T wish to learn leadership, but instead, you only want to bellyache about the military. Which is fine with me - we earn the right to bitch by serving. But, for your own good, you do need to be honest with yourself.
As for attaining a "leadership position" - that is another subject entirely. The best leaders, of course, are good followers. Are you a good follower? Do you work hard to make your mates and superiors look good? Do you support your juniors? Are you always there, willing to do whatever it takes? Do you volunteer to "go the extra mile"?
If so - maybe you really are in the wrong MOS. Maybe even the wrong branch of military. The Navy does things considerably different than the Army - you might consider a tour with the fleet after your army service.
I have one son in the Army, one going into the Navy. If they switched places, I don't think either would be happy - it all depends on the individual's aptitude, personality, etc.
But, please, let's not blame the Army for a failure to learn a skill. You can learn if you wish to learn. Demonstrating that skill is the path to advancement, not bitching about the lack of a skill.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Anyone on this forum heard of TCP/IP? Maybe I am getting old, but I remember the internet as a DARPA project. Source got distributed and ported to whatever you OS you happened to be using. Sounds like open source to me.
Yeah it's in servers and weapons, but can anyone get Firefox installed on thier desktops yet?
In my opinion it should be. It means being negative about the rest. I don't see how that helps to all get along.
Bert
Who was never brainwashed at school to pledge allegiance to a plot of territory (a ritual invented by a guy from a flag factory to sell more flags)
Really? So if you love your [hypothetical, I know] wife, it means you hate all other women?
P.S. Some guy by the name of John J Dwyer called...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can tell you as an American I have not forgotten the troops from other countries that work along side our troops. Maybe someone else has but not me.
Who are fighting in Iraq & Afghanistan.
There are soldiers from many other countries who are fighting right alongside the US Forces.
Personally, I regret the loss of the lives of any service personell regardless of which country they are from.
That's because pointing out that other countries are also fighting would belie the spin we've been fed that we're fighting "unilaterally".
It's not sad to see it appear trollish when really it does not have much relevance at all to the topic at hand. Any moron can throw posts all over that say, "WOOO!! Go !"
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dunno.
If your wife hates all other women and you love your wife enough to believe in every ideal she believes in without question, then yes you hate all other women.
If you follow your country blindly while it creates war with others over possibly meaningless matters or when there are other options besides war and you never once question it then you are a bigot.
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dunno.
Man, you are working hard convoluting that to get what you want it to mean out.
You are even assigning attributes that aren't always there in order to do it. How proud you must be. Here is a hint, you don't need to be blindly obedient to be patriotic. You don't need to blindly trust or accept anything the country is doing to be patriotic. Only in your imaginary world is that true.
I've been working as a software developer in a military research lab for about 7 years. My primary area of work is development of middleware to allow interoperability between DoD systems that otherwise have no such capability. I'm a big proponent of using general open source solutions as well as the military having their own "open source" for situations that might not be appropriate for public distribution, but are very relevant across the entire DoD.
The resistance always comes in people guarding their products, ultimately to protect jobs and/or profit. The contracting companies have their stovepipe systems, and typically they want to be the sole source of development/maintenance. Even government entities keep things closed off from one another; I've had many instances where I've been told to either partially distribute or not distribute DoD-owned software (including source) when requested by another element of the DoD. Too many people are worried about their intellectual property, which makes it very difficult to tear down these political barriers. This ultimately results in the exact same functionality being developed many times over, which I've seen all too often. We're making some progress, but it's going to take significant buy-in from someone high up (read: with star(s) on their shoulder) to push the agenda. Otherwise, it continues to be a large amount of talk without much in the way of results.
Speaking of large amount of talk, I recently met with one of the key speakers at the aforementioned conference (Major James D. Neushul). This individual is a risk to adoption of open source principles...not because he opposes them, but because his mouth exceeds his knowledge. He speaks largely in buzzwords and jumps between concepts as soon as you corner him on the technical inaccuracies of his claims, but he does so with fervent insistence of his correctness. At one point in our discussion, he actually stated that the ideal solution right now is for every computer, down to the individual warfighter level, to be running an instance of a web server and use web applications. He also wrote the "specification" for an XML version of a widely-used bit-oriented messaging format (VMF), except he didn't write schemas, but rather a description of how one should make the schemas. It's a pretty scary stance to assume that a set of tag-naming rules is going to result in compatibility of all the independently developed schemas. It's unfortunate that this individual is probably going to alienate many skilled and otherwise open-supporting engineers....such as myself and my entire engineering team, all of whom are on-board with opening up DoD capabilities...yet none of us can tolerate his sloppy, bravado-laden approach.
Some Marines get pretty offended when they're called "soldiers."
QamuIs Heg qaq law' lorvIs yInqaq puS
I have some karma to burn, so I'll say it.
Military use of Free software is in violation of the spirit of the movement. Yes, the letter of the GNU licences doesn't stop you doing immoral things with code, but it is clear that if I took the time to contribute a nice little program to the human race, it wasn't so that some bastard could come along and in use it to facilitate the blowing apart of other human beings. The fatigue-wearing bullies of some regime halfway across the world, be it in Korea, India, the US, Honduras or anywhere else, are not welcome to the fruits of my labour.
Any discussion of this matter which does not consist either of plans to stop this happening, or sighing wishes that things could be different, is completely missing the point, and a sign of a lack of civilisation.
The US Military is currently all abuzz about OSS. Ecspecially the top leaders. They see that OSS development teams are managing to be successful in areas where military acquisition programs are failing. Software development in a military acquisition program is a painstakenly slow process. Software revisions take years on major acquisition programs. Quick patching of even serious bugs is impossible and even if it were possible can cost millions. Furthermore, the software is not sustainable. The software that they purchase is typically tied to a piece of hardware and when that hardware becomes unavailable or obselete, they cannot port that software to new hardware because they do not have the source code to do so.
Consider this, there are US military aircraft flying right now with hardware and software for which they have no source data. The systems are tied into critical data buses with other avionics. And get this...the hardware and software are designed and built in a foreign country (many times Israel, which is notorious for their espionage activities).
What is my point? The US military acquisition teams are not trained to handle the modern world of software where data rights play a key role in making sure that their systems are secure, sustainable, reliable, and affordable. They know that OSS does well in all of these aspects, but so have many closed source software teams. Until they understand why their acquisition programs have failed in this respect, they will not be successful in their attempt to fix their problems by mimicking OSS processes.
Here is a hint, you don't need to be blindly obedient to be patriotic. You don't need to blindly trust or accept anything the country is doing to be patriotic.
More to the point, most definitions of patriotism put the ideals of the country above the actions of the government.
Here is a hint, you don't need to be blindly obedient to be patriotic.
I never once said that you have to be blindly obedient to be patriotic, I said that if you did then a patriot would == bigot. Ahh.. the wonderful invention of the 'if' statement. If only there were some equivalent in the English language, oh yes if.
Only in your imaginary world is that true.
I only wish that even half of all the bullshit I have seen in this world were imaginary.
Unfortunatly, as a lower enlisted you won't be able to have any real impact on the army. As others suggested, you need to either go warrant officer route or just plain officer for anyone to really pay attention to you. This is sort of continuing your rant, but I spent four years in the army as well, leaving as an E4. I wasn't interested in being an officer or warrant officer or making a career in it, I just wanted to serve my country for 4 years and then continue on with my business IRL.
During my time, I wrote a program that completely automated some of the database and paperwork tasks my office was in charge of that saved our understaffed office at least 10 hours a week. I tested installing it at the next battalion over that did the same sort of work, and they fell in love with it also. It was reliable and fairly well polished. I tried submitting it to the army as a whole through their proper channels for "ideas for the army". It was signed off at the local level and passed on to the European level reviewing authorities where it disappeared forever. I quite badgering people to look at it eventually because it was obvious that whoever was in charge up there either:
A. Couldn't understand how to properly evaluate in house software developed and submitted this way (the way I submitted it for review wasn't normally for software, but there was no other suitable way to have it reviewed)
B. Wasn't going to bother with looking at something that a mere rank-and-file E4 cooked up for army wide deployment. I included the source code and they could have had anyone they want look at it...
Regardless, the army has too much red tape for these sorts of process. I could have saved them 1000's of hours a week army wide if they actually gave a damn and looked at my program. Since my MOS didn't say "software developer" anywhere on it, I didn't have a chance. With any luck and these new programs, the army could actually make "military intelligence" less of an oxymoron and give open source programs such as the one I tried submitting a chance.