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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."
It's good to know when your code is contributing in killing others!
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.
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)
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.