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Linux as Military Standard?
Phil Gross writes "InfoWorld's Robert X. Cringely is reporting that the US Air Force is considering adding Linux to the list of potential standard military operating systems.
It seems the U.S. Air Force has recognized the significance of the momentum behind Linux, according to one reader. Apparently it is asking developers and users if they would be interested in a Defense Information Infrastructure-Common Open Environment (DII COE) segment for Linux. If there is enough interest, Linux would become an "official" operating system for military computers.'
I'd love to get more details on this. "
In related news, Wired is reporting the Navy is reconsidering its use of NT: " the Navy said that while Windows NT was specified in the Statement of Work as the operating system for the workstations in question, other components of a coming upgrade will primarily utilize Unix-based systems. The source said. "I don't think that Unix or NT were ever really evaluated -- it was just somebody thinking this was good, with no knowledge"". Thanks to brentbent
In related news, Wired is reporting the Navy is reconsidering its use of NT: " the Navy said that while Windows NT was specified in the Statement of Work as the operating system for the workstations in question, other components of a coming upgrade will primarily utilize Unix-based systems. The source said. "I don't think that Unix or NT were ever really evaluated -- it was just somebody thinking this was good, with no knowledge"". Thanks to brentbent
Now navy ships won't have to power down and reboot when they wanna change IP's. :)
Where's the correct URL?
TUX finally gets the big guns.....feel the power baby....
Now who said penguins can't fly? :)
Have they been using NT up to this point? It'd be funny if the US got in a war and their NT systems crashed and we all died and then we could all blame bill gates. That'd be fun.
This story is nearly substantial enough to put in The Register. I wonder what Cringely has to say about Transmeta.
Jeesh, what a lame story.
... secure a Linux distro (or even one of the
BSDes) and put that money in training and
testing the system for high security.
The amount of money spent on NT should be
invested in manpower.
If the U.S. ever goes to war with any country
with real IT capabilities, the DODs NT servers
are going to be the first casualities.
Shall we play a game Dr Falken..
This just adds another thing to the list of bans things that UNSCUM will be searching iraq for (if it ever gets started again). Now it'll be nukes, chem & biological weapons, and free software..
As if this matters. Where I work, the USAF has been using Linux on some machines for about 3 years. There's nothing to stop any USAF organization from purchasing and using Linux right now.
Dave K
daking at infinet dot com
Sorry, but i dont want to have something thats a part of the US military, or any other military. Im gunna uninstall linux right now, and maybe use FreeBSD
I think its pretty sickening, to think that Linux could be used to make killing cheaper and more reliable. I suggest an explicit exclusion of the use of any line of Linux's code to be used in defense related installations.
Of course the DOD could completely by-pass clauses like this (I assume), but I know for sure that I would be able to sleep at night if I thought my malloc's were storing the co-ords of soon-to-be-dead humans.
Save the pacifist tree-hugger crap.
If the military uses Chryslers, Fords, and Chevys as fleet vehicles, are you not going to drive one? During the Gulf War the military probably bought more Evian bottled water than any other customer, perhaps you would like to boycott them? Oh, while you're at it, forget about airline travel, 'cause Pratt & Whitney and GE got most of their jet engine expertise building for the DoD. In fact, just log off right now, since BB&N got money from the military to do research which led to the creation of the Internet.
You're only free to spout this idiocy due to the efforts of men better than yourself...You should thank them sometime.
Hey Ben, we're gonna be Airmen, computer Airmen! Well golly! Sergeant King gave me his watch and said that I am gonna be P-L-O: Permanent Linux Orderly, P-L-O! Hey, Ben, now you don't have to join the infantry; you can stay right here and be my helper! Oh, you can help me with kernel hackin' and latexin' and slashdottin' ... it's familiar!
Private Will Stockdale, P-L-O
(Permanent Linux Orderly)
Damn, that was funny.
Anyone who has spent more than 15 miniutes diddling around with the DII COE realizes that there's something pretty non-standard going on under the hood.
...and there is. All the DII COE Kernels have been hacked with, uh, special features. In fact there's a seperate oranization called the OSF that has been established to help programmers integrate applications under the various special DII COE environments. When you look at the off the shelf packages that are part of a standard OSF load, it reads like a debian package list and for the most part zero changes are required to get most applications working under the COE. In fact OSF has some fairly nice packaging tools that it would have been nice for them to give back to the community. I'm sure that the authors of some of the tools used by the OSF/DoD would have a cow if they knew how their code was being used. Peacenix, be sure to put appropriate restrictions in your licensing agreements. At a minimum, put in a clause that extracts money from the war machine (not that you'll ever know that your tools are in used, but it should make for a nice settlement when/if disclosure ever occures).
The closest that mortal programmers get to the DII COE Kernel source is specs and a STU III phone number or two to call in case they run into anything insurmountable. So, the price of entry into that arena is to close the source. I don't know just how far down the tree the black box would extend, but I imagine that a few of the major libraries would close up as well.
This is bad for Linux and, generally speaking, makes it very difficult for Linux and the DII COE kernels to advance in parallel. Back when I was concerned with pissing on the many fires caused by the DII COE, one of the most frustrating parts of the jobs was knowing that Solaris/NT/HPUX/whatever had an enormious bug/hole/problem with a the most current DII COE release that was fixed in the current commercial release and that the necessary commercial patches could not be applied without the house of cards crashing to the ground. The standard DII COE 6-12 month release lag was super annoying.
When I was working as a contractor for the DoD over 2 years ago, I pushed hard for the OSF and my company (SAIC) to consider Linux. I had pegged it for the emerging trend that it is and I realized that we would have to deal with it sooner or later (and that we would save a boatload of money). When I brought it up at a major conference (Navy) I was throughly re-buffed (I was actually told by a boss 2 tiers up to not even mention Linux or the fact that we had been experimenting with it).
Tunes change as the winds of fortune blow over bureaucracy and for stand-alone, administrative, unclass or embedded systems Linux might make a good choice; however, due to amount of control that the DoD exercises over the red-net/black-net systems, it does the Linux community no good to be included in that particular, uh, market segment. It's certainly not going to save anyone any money; any savings derived from not purchasing a source license (required for each version of other OSs), will go to the OSF rice bowl to keep their programmers feed and happy while maintaining the parallel DII COE Linux kernel (they'll have their work cut out for them too... instead of the leasurly 1-2 year release cycle to which they are accustom, they're going to have to do double time, in an attempt to keep up with 2-3 month release cycle that the OSS community maintaines... actually I think this is a task that the OSF is not able of doing with out more warm bodies and bigger budgets).
One other observation for the happy-go-lucky OSS community. In matters of national security, the GPL has no currency. The GPL, for the most part, is a door way though which the OSF can introduce open source to a closed community (and pad their budgets). Now, doesn't that just make you feel warm and fuzzy?
Still, anything is better than a brass-end trargeting tool blue-screening in the middle of a mission. I guess that's why we still have warm bodies in cockpits and what-not.
i got a big laff out of seeing all these "I WILL NOW STOP USING LINUX TO PROTEST THE USE OF LINUX TO MAKE KILLING EASIER" kiddies.
hello? mcfly? the act of killing the enemy is only 5-10% of the goal of military defense. intelligence gathering, signals intercept, subversion and misinformation are the bulk of defense operations.
but wait, i forgot.. this is slashdot, where 98% of the readership are drooling idiots that believe whatever they hear.
Is this what we who have contributed to Open Source want our code used for?
They were all flaming that guy who suggested using the new super-heavy element in armor piercing shells (like depleted Uranium is used now). Now you hypocrites are siding with the war-mongers.
Idiots.
Actually, the Navy already uses the Penguin, or at least has considered it, for the SH-60B SeaHawks that are on frigates, destroyers, and cruisers.
It would be morally wrong to control killing
machines with proprietary software. Leaving
aside the question of killing people (which is
often a good idea), the military is doing the
Right Thing.
... if you recognize the subject you recognize boilerplate from a DOD spec. The full line goes "no fixed part shall become loose and no movable part shall become undesirably loose or sluggish."
I wonder why the "undesirably loose or sluggish" part was never applied to the OSs Uncle Sugar buys.
That means you'll have to stay off the Internet, because it was derived from ARPANET, developed by the US Department of Defense.
Good riddance!
BSD is far more secure. Trendiness in the US Military?? Oh man...
Not that Linux sucks - it's just that goddamned stack that needs to be made non-executable, that makes me pheer.
Seriously,
The way the Army interprets security regulations, any known security holes in a DII COE operating system would be Secret. This probably doesn't mean that the men in the black helicopters will come swarming in and shut down CERT, but any holes that the DOD finds while testing Linux they'll keep to themselves.
Then against, it's against policy for Army Sys Admins to test their own boxes using tools like SATAN or SAINT so it's hard to say how tightly configured they'll be.
"Software doesn't kill people. People kill people"
So you want to stop using a computer tool if the military uses it? Remember to also stop using steel. Stop using radios. Stop using electricity. Stop using oils (fuel and cooking).
Stop using rubber, as the Army drives all over the place on it. Stop using water, as the Navy uses an awful lot of it; a ship just wouldn't be the same without it.
(Say, care to come protest weapons at the plant near me? This plant doesn't make that kind of weapons, but the protesters apparently come here just because it's the nearest weapons-related building. Choosing protest targets based on convenience.)
bah. navy, airforce, same thing ;)
I am AF and my primary job for the past 2 years has been maintaning 7 Linux servers for a variety of purposes.
oh yeah, by the way I have not killed anybody or started any wars with them yet.
1. Do you want those things to operate
correctly (and blast the military command
center) or BSOD and wander off course (and
end up in a kindergarten)?
2. Ideally, the OS ends up as a Utility. Someone
else asked if it was a good or bad thing if
someone used Linux for a Porn site. If Linux
ends up being the universal utility OS, asking
if it is ok to use Linux for a Porn site ends
up like asking if it is ok to use the phone
or the electric company for a bordello.
It DOESN'T MATTER. Everyone
has access to the utility. The use is only
an issue between the service provider and
the consumer.
-- cary
Thank you for playing, please insert another silver bullet and try again.
With Windows, the next world war would have to be World War 7, since, obviously version numbers are best determined by the marketing division, who's research has determined that potential customers respond well to the number 7.
``Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.''-- Stuart Smalley
You're an idiot... Too bad they don't have compulsory service in this country.
Hey Moron!
Don't you realize that the US military is a stabilizing force in world politics? Any enhancements to US military technology will probably save more lives! We're "the good guys"!
His stat was right on. Even in the "combat heavy" Army, only 11% of the force is infantry. The rest can be classified as "infantry support."
Citation: A former Army officer and war veteran (me)
Maybe we'd SAVE lives? :)
Linux is in use all over the military, but not officially supported.
The latest rumor I have is that the majority of webservers are Linux based, and as fact would have it I know that the state of wisconsin's Natonal guard is using it extensively. I recently completed an online survey of IT skills for U.S. Army reservists and complained about the lack of Linux and apache as well as other GPL software under the software they were inquireing about, and was told it is in the process of being added as of last week.
Spc Clay Mellender
U.S. Army Reserves
(My own opinions and observations, not official military policies)
The stupid children are those from the air force killing people in Italy just for fun ...
Yes, but 88% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Ethical concerns aside, a technical issue comes to my mind:
When Linux becomes a military OS, it may also become target of more hostile attacks in forms of trojans and intentionally introduced bugs.
The military might not be too vulnerable, as they (should) have the resources to check new code of vital programs first. But for the general community, this may become a problem.
Avus
I understood that the millitary and TLAs used 'secured' unices that allowed users to be allocated different security levels, and that the OS made sure that users were never allowed to snoop on information or processes that were running above their clearance. Anyone got any experience of these systems?
"[...] everything is on a basic dependency system, which loads in a sort of order that actually makes sense [...]"
Yeah, except for the fact segments had to be loaded in a certain order... which is why every contractor on the shit end of the stick built a successful load at home base and developed their own scripts to re-name/re-address/re-configure in the field. So much inter-contractor squabling, ivory-tower eliteism, i'm-surrounded-by-idiots FUD exists that it is sometimes hard to tell fact from fiction. Where the rubber meets the road is where it counts and that's what I deal with on a daily basis. I will admit that the segment tool has some nice feature that, some day, will be truly useful once it works 100% as advertized. If it is any consolation, the debian package manager still has problems too...
"linux will have to go through an extremely rigorous testing for security purposes before it ever gets close to being considered a 'secure' system."
Humm... I believe you'll find that Linux hit that cross over point (by my own personal estimates) about 10 months ago (and without the help of the community, I might add). We all know who Bill had to sleep with to get NT's C2 approval (or was that his contractor butt-boy?). Admission into the DII COE circle jerk is a matter of having friends in the right places and being far enough up the protocol stack, yourself, to make an impact. Nobody in their right mind would believe that NT was unclustered before receiving that holy DII COE blessing. Get a grip on reality, man. We all know that real, but modest form of network protection is available only via bulk encryption, dedicated circuits and good key managment... not that peskie DII COE kernel (which may or may not be good for in-progress and post mortums (very different from prevention)).
How do the testostrone ridden put it? Linux has been there and done that and continues to push the envelope in that regard. After all, sheltered operating systems and networks, just like spoiled children, wilt and crumble when exposed to the Real World (tm).
The community may have some tricks up their sleeves that they could contribute with regard to security, but if there isn't going to be flow back to the public, what's the point. That closed source mindset is dieing a hard death; however, if you read what has been published in the last 2 years, you'll realize that the community is understands that OSS and full source disclosure is the only way to rapidly strengthen security while gaining features. Here's a warm and fuzzy thought for your no-disclosure mind set: if you don't release your tricks back to the OSS community the only people with un-trickable operating systems are going to potentially be the ones you play against. I don't see member countries jumping on the DII COE bandwagon, despite the community's best efforts to "sell" the natives beads and trinkets (an small pox infested blankets). I do see a lot of foreign militaries realizing the power of Linux and OSS in general, though.
"Yes, I would like to consider the systems that are in use now very secure"
You need an in-country reality check between the way things happen in clean room testing and what actually happens in the field.
"SAIC? Fuck you by the way [...] Who the hell taught you guys how to script? Job security you say?"
You obviously have me confused with the "tax payer money to body heat conversion division" (one of the most profitable sectors I might add). Some of the really innovative stuff the SAIC used to do has degenerated into rampant money grabbing common to all contractors that have been around for more than 10 years.
"Linux is looked at as an alternative for services that cost too much. I don't think you'll be seeing it frontrunning a push for PC's (We love sun equipment for a reason, IT WORKS)"
PC, Sun, HP, Silicon Graphics... whatever;
Never fall in love with your hardware or operating system... it's the surest sign of chronic, progressive technical obsolence disease.
The load placed on DoD infrastructure is a small shadow of that to which the commercial sector is exposed and it would be accurate to say that current system platforms are sized well enough to last through 5-10 more years of "growth".
It will not be long before Linux starts to have feature sets that are unique to Linux. Common organic hardware is a good thing. You have obviously have never spent a week trying to chase down a Sparc motherboard that had it's shorts snaped by a deployed power grid. You probably haven't had to deal with shaft-of-the-spear pack-ratism (those of you who work in the logistics field know EXACTLY what I'm talking about). It must be nice to live in an ideal utopia.
Anyway one of the really darkhourse aspects of Linux is that the depth of the market hasn't been fully plumbed yet. That is to say, companies like Oracle, Sybase, Informix, etc. are introducing products for the Linux platform without know how much the customer is willing to pay. So, not only is the hardware cheap, but the software required for interoperability is going to enter a pricing realm unavailable to closed hardware/operating systems. That's a dynamic that most people haven't relized yet. Don't get too excited though... it just means higher profit margines for that "money to body heat division". The first time a major contractor is under bid by someone who has put together a Linux solution is when Linux will hit the big time in the DoD.
If you seek the truth, follow the money... or something like that.
Since I'm living in Germany right now I'd be more than happy if NT couldn't be exported :-)
Major making decision reads executive summary of reports only,
Non-technical Captain recommends NT (because he uses it) and report was really written by some Corporal in his command.
Lieutenant recommends AIX/UNIX/LINUX (what the hell are they, why can't he come to a clear choice!)
Major selects NT because Superior Rank and he does not have to explain to the General who Microsoft is.
As an ex-Air Force programmer, Linux seems a perfect choice. The AF would need many flavors of Linux and could create its own. It could also force contractors to use it instead of write their own OS for embedded systems. It would cut maintenance costs because all the programmers would have to learn one kernel and a few derivations for kernel development and maintenance.
If the AF has a brain, it will use Linux for embedded systems and for development!
I used to be in Army intelligence. We used a Linux based network system to analyze and share intelligence (not to mention email and file/printing services). That was 3 years ago.
We all know that Linux is a superior product to most of the commercially viable OSes. So superior that it rarely fails for the tasks it is assigned. But will this lead to more People of Color dying because of reliability of Linux?
I mean the next time the President has a problem keeping it in his pants and needs to distract the American population by killing Arabs and Africans with cruise missiles, will more be killed because Linux gave the US Military an advantage over NT? Less system failures means more people dead. How many People of Color have been saved by a "Blue Screen of Death"?
Would Linus approve of a killing machine using his OS? Is there anything he can do to prevent Linux from being used as a tool of death and destruction?
now killing people is less expensive! :P
---
She was more than just the patron of Charles Babbage, she wrote both the first computer program and the first programming-HOWTO. While Chuck was mucking about with designing the Analytical Engine, she wrote a monogram on how to use such a machine to do things. The example program was to calculte Bernoulli numbers, and made use of loops and conditionals. Some credit her with "inventing" such structures, but the Jacuard (sp?) looms also used them.
PS: She wasn't the daughter of Percy Shelley (the poet) or Mary Wollstonecraft. She was the daughter of Lord Byron (the poet), and Annabella Milbanke.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
From a military point of view, Linux is a much better choice than the proprietary offerings. One of the most important features that they would be looking for is the source code, for security, stability, and the ability to customise the code for their applications. I don't think that the military should trust any of their mission-critical systems to proprietary software, for the same reason they wouldn't buy Jeeps or Humvees with the hood welded shut.
If any of you think that Open Source software should not be used in the killing of people, think about the fact that it's not Linux or OSS actually doing the killing. Guns don't kill people. People do. Not that killing people is any good, either.
yet anyway... I've done some work on computers in the army, even though it's not my MOS... :) But I've gotten tired of windows 3.1 stuff, which some military places still use alot of, in my experience with their computers... Some of their apps are gonna need special considerations too, due to security concerns.. still, I'll support it, as I'll support anything that helps our government stopwasting money. :)
David, who's always hopeful about things like this working out...
This sig left intentionally blank.
Computer consultant on the side, but all I'm gotta deploy during Annual Traning this year is vechicles... transportation mos's only get to do computer work when things have gotta be fixed for missions, it seems... but good luck in your deployment, the computer kind anyway, hopefully not the company kind...
David
This sig left intentionally blank.
Coz that air you're using, it was at some point, cycled through the engines of a military jet.
...
And probably contains particles that were farted from the ass of some Marine somewhere.
So, I'd stop breathing, if I were you
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Posted by Myrdraal:
As the topic says, you need to read further down. The interesting story is the next-to-last paragraph or thereabouts.
-Myrdraal
Linux owes its existence to the Internet.
The Internet owes its existence to the old ARPAnet.
The ARPAnet owed its existence to the US Military.
Linux is already the outcome of a millitary project, for better or for worse it's already "tainted" thusly.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Some things are so universally ubiquitous that everyone uses them, even those who disagree with each other completely. Would you stop using a brand of disk drive if you found that Microsoft uses that brand too? Of course not. This is no different.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Since when is dividing by 0 a buffer overrun? You get a floating point exception (SIGFPE).
NT? Feh.
see article
Mark
So the "laws of nature" mandate using jet-propelled, computer-controlled nuclear missiles against entire cities of people you've never met, eh?
I'd say you are pretty much correct here. Animals use whatever means they have in order to defeat an enemy. Humans weren't given neat stingers where our butts are. We don't have venom glands. We don't have really big teeth or claws. We aren't exceptionally big, strong, or fast. We don't blend in very well in most cases. We don't have much protection from the elements. What we do have is the intelligence to allow us to overcome all the things that seem to be deficiencies when we first look at them. We wanted protection and food, so we made clubs and spears and such. Then we went out and killed animals that we would otherwise have been no match for.
You see, when two countries have opposite views on something and neither side is willing to compromise thier stance, there is little choice but to force the other side to comply. That way you either get what you want and weaken the other side to the point where they can't object, or you are weakened and lose the ability to take what you want.
Animals fight all the time. As another poster said, chimps have been seen to fight with other groups of chimps. It happens with alot of the big mammals. You think rams butting heads to see who will be the dominant male is not violent? I believe lions and other pack animals also have violent conflicts to resolve leadership problems.
We've just elevated things to a much higher level. One could wonder if our intelligence combined with our violent instincts could be our downfall. If the enemy keeps inventing stronger weapons, you must also invent stronger weapons or risk being made subservient to or destroyed by that enemy. Unfortunately, I don't think humans have hit their full destructive potential yet.
That's pretty scary, but it still conforms with the laws of nature I think. We are using whatever means we can to defeat or deter enemies. Luckily, as in the animal world, the threat of violence is often enough to deter an enemy. If they believe you have the power to kill or at least seriously hurt them, they may decide that it's not worth fighting.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
...looks to me as the Navy uses "the hip os of the" day strategy. :)
"Gee, this Linux stuff seems to be getting a lot of press lately, let's use that for our carriers"
I have no idea of what the navy is using their OSes for, but why don't they just use QNX and get over it?
(not to be taken too seriously, really!)
Jon
Now, would it be RMS or ESR riding the nuke all the way down? ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
In fact, I don't know of any other animals that engage in war at all, except for ants. Let's face it, it's an aberration.
Yep, it was named after Lady Lovelace, the famous patron of computing pioneer Charles Babbage and an early AI prophet in her own right. She was the daughter of Percy Shelly (the poet) and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of Frankenstein), so you knew she had to turn out cool. ;)
I'd much rather have my taxes helping the OSS community than going to Microsoft. I would also like it that the agency in charge of defending my country is using stable, efficient OSes on their computers.
Would it be bad if the Mafia used Linux? Is it bad if a porn site uses Linux? I don't know if Linus, Alan, or any of the other people involved really care. With respect to Linux, all I care about is that the people involved are working towards the goal of making the best OS possible.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
BTW, guess what operating system www.mil.fi web server uses.
then, at the funding sources for MIT in the 1970's-early 1980's. That is, all sources of funding for the total budget, including grants and overhead levy/allocation. The institution where FSF and GNU got their start. Something RMS doesn't seem to talk about very much.
sPh
Since "munitions" are subject to strict export controls the USAF flavor of Linux would have to be distributed in the United States only.
Or am I wrong?
Hrm, hey look everyone, this OS stopped our new superboat dead in the water...let's tow it back to base and act like nothing ever happened! (several months later) Hrm, ya know, maybe we should rethink that whole OS thing...
Can we say *DUH!*
If anyone is allowed to ship "munitions" overseas, it would be the military.
This certainly puts the whole "World Domination" plan in a new light....
Program Intellivision!
Terrififc. World War 3.0.2b.
--Jim
The USAF uses telephones too. Also, I don't think ADA is a munition.
--Jim
There are some rockets (Manufactured in Norway) which is called Penguin rockets. Imagine fire those at the enemy :)
- Who can beat the operating system of the penguin when it fires real Penguin rockets?
As far as I know, no military money went into the development of Linux. On the other hand, DARPA helped fund BSD--specifically, the development of its network code. Oh, and better stop using TCP/IP, too, since its design and development was paid for by the military. Forget about the Internet, of course, since it was funded for years by the military. Stop using anything with IC's, since they were developed for missile guidance. In fact, stop using computers altogether, since much of early computer research was paid for by the military. Take up fabric arts, or soybean farming, or open a shoeshine stand. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we'll go on using military technology for non-military purposes, with a smile on our faces, since no one can own us.
A DII-COE for Linux would be DoD-wide, not service-specific. This would be a giant's *leap* forward.
-- Cerebus
-- Cerebus
I wish there was a more secure OS that was popular.
There is no such thing as security, it's all an illusion. You can't stop bad people from getting at your data, you can only make it enough of a pain in the ass to do it that they don't think it's worth the bother, and then you've got to worry about it still being available to the people who need it. Everything involved is a trade-off. You want to 100% fool-proof keep people from accessing your computer? Turn it off. If that's not good enough, (Hey, someone might break in to your house!) wrap it in a mile or so of copper wire, plug it in for a few minutes, and once the fire dept. has put out your house, toss the slag down to the bottom of the ocean. And then, if you're really lucky, there won't be anyone twisted enough to try and dredge it up...
Seriously though, it's better and more 'secure' to have an OS that gets fixed right away when one of the million problems that exist is located, instead of a few months from now, maybe, if the makers want to recognize the problem as worth their time.
Over here in good old Blighty our Combined Cadet Force (a lot of children dressed up in uniform and made to do drill, just like the real RAF/Army/Navy) already use Linux to run our web server (I can't remember the URL). Even though we also use it to track the rounds (bullets to you and me) and weapons (mainly Lee-Enfield .22 riles) on the range, you can hardly call it a 'killer app'.
~Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question.
I would think that this would fall in the same category as strong encryption. (Can only be exported to Canada)
Actually I'm quite surprised that they are willing to release their software to the general public at all. If the US military wants to use Linux and release any software they create for it I say go for it. The more developers the better.
Nt is one of the DII/COE OS's, as are several flavors of 'NIX. HP/UX...
Full DII/COE Info at:
http://spider.osfl.disa.mil/cm/general.html
I left the AF recently, and IMHO ;) the DII/COE is about the biggest load of crap ever to suck tax-payer dollars...
Full info is at :
http://spider.osfl.disa.mil/cm/general.html
Isn't part of the definition of Open Source Software (as listed on www.opensource.org) that it can not exclude anyone from using it?
--Spike Gronim
His Pteradatyl would have had to have evolved into a Penguin...
They have been covering the yorktown crash from just about the start. Very intersting reading.