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NASA Report Advocates Switch to Open Source 276

Posted by michael from the don't-have-to-be-a-rocket-scientist dept.
vortimax writes "A new technical report from the NASA Ames Research Center advocates the adoption of Open Source Software internally by NASA for some projects. The paper also proposes modifications to NASA's "external software release" policies to allow OSS and proposes the use of the Mozilla Public License as the license of choice for NASA software."
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NASA Report Advocates Switch to Open Source More

NASA Report Advocates Switch to Open Source

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  • NASA (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:02PM (#5973801)
    Will it help their aim at Mars?

  • International Collaboration (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ikeya ( 7401 ) <dave&kuck,net> on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:05PM (#5973822) Homepage
    It's good to see this kinda thing start to happen. I feel that space exploration is humanity's job as a whole. What a great way to promote all humanity contributing to the space exploration effort than by contributing source code. Granted, I know this doesn't mean it's all gonna be done open source-like, but hey, it's still cool and in a way, allows everyone to participate.

    ikeya

  • Asking for trouble.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:05PM (#5973824)
    Just make sure that all of your coders are using the same measurment system.
    • Just make sure that all of your coders are using the same measurment system.

      Or write a class that has both .value and .unit members, and math functions that perform conversions whenever necessary.
  • Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.

    • Maybe if Microsoft had opened up its source, as NASA seems to be saying it might allow for some code, may be the Thai Minister would now be happily cruising the streets in his BMW without a care in the world.

      A lot of public money has gone into NASA over the years, so to some people's way of thinking, the people already own that source code. I'm suprising some National Security types aren't stamping all over this already though ...

    • Mod parent down... (Score:3, Informative)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 )
      But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure. She declined to reveal if the firm received identical reports from other users in the country.

      You can't complain about Microsoft FUD when the Anti-Microsoft FUD is just as bad.

    • Re:Would you fly with windows CE? (Score:4, Informative)

      by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:57PM (#5974288)
      Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.

      Unfortunately this seems to be a hoax:

      CNET reports [cnet.com]that, contrary to rumours that the BMW that trapped a Thai minister inside earlier this week was "the famously glitchy BMW 745i car, and its Windows CE-powered iDrive car computer", it was, according to a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand, the 10-year old BMW 520i model that "suffered a simple electronic failure".

      (from Looswire [weblogger.com])

      • Re:Would you fly with windows CE? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @02:18PM (#5974467)
        the 10-year old BMW 520i model that "suffered a simple electronic failure".

        That reminds me of the time I had circa 1991. I was out shopping for cars, and I thought I would have a look at the BMW 5 series. They had one in a color I liked, and I asked if I could look inside. This one had just come in, and its battery was dead. Turns out, the car had some kind of all-electronic door locks, and there was no mechanical way to unlock the car. The battery would have to be charged first; there was a plug under the bumper to do that in just this situation. Here we were at the BMW dealer, and they couldn't get inside their own car. Not good.

    • After reading the article, it makes me want a BMW even more!

      Doors won't open w/o power, windows are hard to break with a HAMMER... Sounds like I've found a car that won't be broken into like all of the cars around my house!
    • Given that the Thai finance minister had to be rescued from his BMW with sledgehammers after his WinCE powered iDrive computer crashed, methinks I would prefer to fly on open source software.

      Though this is a hoax, you still missed the point. For embedded systems, it's not Windows vs. Linux, it's "small, 100% completely understandable and predicatable systems" vs. general, complex operating systems. The latter includes all desktop OSes, period. You absolutely would not want Linux controlling the systems

  • My open source contribution to NASA (Score:5, Funny)

    by product byproduct ( 628318 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:11PM (#5973881)
    double Feet2Meters(double feet)
    {
    return feet * 0.3048;
    }

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:12PM (#5973884) Homepage
    ...is it "GNASA" now?

  • Isn't government owned software public domain? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:14PM (#5973906) Homepage Journal
    I thought the government couldn't copywrite anything. Or does NASA not count?
    • Yes.

      Things the have come out of JPL and NASA, as well as the national laboratories, have consistently been in the public domain. Adding the restrictions of the Mozilla license is a step backwards.

  • Plain English of Licenses? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by johnynek ( 36948 ) <boykin@pobox.com> on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:15PM (#5973911) Homepage
    I know some karma-whore can answer this:

    Is there some page which compares all the licenses in some table, or in english language terms?

    Something like: the Creative Commons explains for their licenses [creativecommons.org] would be very helpful for comparing: MIT X11, BSD, GPL, LGPL, BSD, OSL, Mozilla PL, Apple PL, etc...

    If this does not exist, the community would benefit from it!

  • Not a wholesale switch (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:15PM (#5973914)
    This is a remarkably balanced report for a government. It advocates a mix of internally developed and external software, including both open source and proprietary software, depending upon the situation.

    You'd think this was a pretty obvious take, but far too often government processes are hijacked by either open source zealots or commercial interests. Leaning in either direction can cause great technical difficulty and cost to the public.

    Keep in mind that NASA has no great software policy, but a huge amoung of software in place. A policy to ensure consistency and fairness over much of the existing software uses could have great advantages in efficiency for the organization. Of course, what you think of the existance of NASA in the first place or its usefulness in its current form is up to you...

  • Why not Public Domain? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hobbs ( 82453 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:18PM (#5973944)
    Excepting anything that might be considered secret and confidential (like missile guidance software ... which probably never gets released anyway), why isn't all NASA software public domain?

    I'm going on the assumption that we are talking solely about all the US taxpayer funded engineers making software there. Why isn't this stuff by definition public?

  • Nasa reads slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sophrosyne ( 630428 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:20PM (#5973960) Homepage

    They must have read the leaked e-mail [slashdot.org] that said if they switched to Linux they'll get Windows for free...
  • If they shared all their craft designs as well then everyone could build their own spacecraft :)

  • this isn't new (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:20PM (#5973964)
    (posting a/c since i work for this particular .gov)

    this isn't really new. a lot of our systems have been oss based. a lot of the data collection is done with linux boxes with lots of large ide drives in 'em. for $11k, we can pick up 3TB of storage. we don't really need the speed, but the storage. themis images get large, fast.

    a lot of missions run on some os from windriver (if that's their name these days)

    i imagine the mars scout people will encounter about the same stuff. it's not like the stuff we're doing is top secret ... anyone with $320 million could launch a mission to mars. =)

  • flight software will never be open source (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:21PM (#5973967)
    While NASA may (hopefully) move to more open release of some code, the chances that this will include any sort of flight software is approximately zero (=0.0 in metric :).

    Flight software is heaviliy restricted, as some people don't want code that can be used to control missiles being distributed freely. Currently, only US citizens are allowed to even look at NASA flight code.

    • Re:flight software will never be open source (Score:4, Informative)

      by DanielRavenNest ( 107550 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:07PM (#5974892)
      Amen. I test flight software for the Space Station for a living. To get to the SW lab I work in requires waving my badge past three successive readers.

      We go through great pains to ensure the software
      we test is as bug-free as we can get it, and we don't want any chance of untested changes creeping
      in. So we have Quality Assurance people and
      government observers that watch as we load
      flight software on the test boxes, and then those
      people produce a copy to ship to Houston when
      we are done testing from the same source.

      Delivery is via a tape shipped by secure methods.
      There is no way we are going to send the source
      code via an open channel because then a different
      version might creep in somehow though error or
      malice.
  • <paranoia>
    I know there is a conspiracy in here someplace... I got it. Microsoft wants to use NASA code is some product so they pulled some strings and got it released. This is why the GPL was not suggested.
    </paranoia>

  • Not actually adoption of software (Score:3, Informative)

    by faxafloi ( 228519 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:22PM (#5973981)
    This doesn't appear to be advocating the use of OSS in NASA; there's nothing that specifically prevents NASA from doing that now. It's advocating an OS distribution license for software that NASA develops.

    Of course, I only skimmed the report, but that's what it looks like.
  • I seem to remember a long time ago about an incident where Bill Gates of Borg toured NASA and offered to GIVE AWAY PCs with M$ Windows on them so that NASA essentially ran on Windows. NASA supposedly did a long term study on Windows and determined that it was not stable enough to run the Space Shuttle and mission control equipment. There would be no way to recover the Space Shuttle during a launch in the event of a Blue Screen Of Death. This is supposedly the reason why Linux is so prevalent inside NASA.
    • WARNING, DANGER WILL ROBINSON

      This software is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazadours enviroments requiring fail-safe peformance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air trafic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which case the failure of the software could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or enviromental damag
  • NASA's software will have all the bugs it would've had under a closed source model, but at least the space shuttle's interface will have skins and GNOME support!

  • Needless to say... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:32PM (#5974080) Journal
    The site www.nasa.gov is running Apache/2.0.45 (Unix) mod_perl/1.99_09-dev Perl/v5.6.1 covalent_auth/2.3 DAV/2 CovalentSSL/2.3.3 RSA/SSLC mod_jk/1.2.2-beta-1 on Linux.

    Like anyone waits for these reports to be written. At least it gave an intern something to do.

  • We might be jumping the gun ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by McAddress ( 673660 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:35PM (#5974102)
    We might be jumping the gun here. Maybe someone said they are swiitching to X11 spacecraft and some geek presumed that that meant open source.

    just my personal theory.

  • NASA is a big MS shop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saintjab ( 668572 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:36PM (#5974113) Homepage Journal
    I used to work for Microsoft and was asked to help NASA several times with support/dev issues they were experiencing. I've visited the Space Center in Cape Canaveral, as well as some other external NASA locations, and they are using a lot of MS technologies. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the Open Source movement, but NASA has a long way to go before any Open Source initiative has any real impact on their development. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited they made this decision, but it's a very small step. Besides, NASA has an extremely rigorous testing campaign for all new hardware and software, so these changes won't be noticed for some time to come. Otherwise this is a great step forward for OSS and I'm very pleased to hear about it! When I was working with them there was a huge aversion to OSS and it gave me the impression that they were diehard MS. There may still be hope for America's space development!

    • I also worked at NASA doing astrophysics and bearly even saw a windows machine the whole time. A few individuals (mostly those who did outreach work for the mostly windows using public) has Windows and I think there was one public one for running Powerpoint. :) Other than that is was all Solaris/SunOS/Digital Unix for older computers and almost exclusively Linux and MacOS for newer computers. And most of the ftp and web servers there will also running on some flavor of *nix.

    • If NASA has an extremely rigorous testing campaign, how the hell did MS get an exclusion?

  • It was all good, until the MPL part. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:41PM (#5974162) Homepage Journal
    From the FSF's [fsf.org] license page [fsf.org] (about halfway down the page):
    The Mozilla Public License (MPL). This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge you not to use the MPL for this reason.
    This means that any MPL program may be distributed with GPL software, but cannot be reused with it. That is, Mozilla and Linux may be distributed together, but you can't take any substantial code from Mozilla and use it to make Gimp better.

    I just can't see how this particular choice of license makes things better for the Linux community. NASA seems to be deliberately slapping us in the face with this.

    It seems, from the PDF document [nasa.gov] (page 8) that their intent is to enable commercial exploitation of their code:

    The Mozilla Public License (MPL) attempts to strike a middle ground between promoting free source development by commercial enterprises and protecting free source developers. Like the GPL, it requires that any and all changes to code (derivative works) covered by the license must be made publicly available. [snip]
    I think that since I've paid once for this proposed code, through my taxes, that there's something fundamentally wrong with allowing NASA to give the code to a business which will ask me to pay for it a second time.

    I'm sure that NASA hopes to collect a fat bribe ... no, a fat license fee ... no, a ``contribution to the Space Program''. That's what I said above, in the preceeding paragraph: this robbery is motivated by a desire to gouge me a second time for the work I paid for once.

    • So, the mozilla developers slapped the linux community in the face when they wrote the MPL.

      Would you react this way if NASA had decided to release all of the code under a BSD-type license, creating essentially the same situation, but without quite as much benefit to NASA? Before you answer, please keep in mind that most gov't projects that release source code do so under a BSD-type license. Some would argue that such a license makes the most sense for gov't projects, since it is the most "free" (i.e., pu

      • Re:It was all good, until the MPL part. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RealAlaskan ( 576404 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:57PM (#5975247) Homepage Journal
        So, the mozilla developers slapped the linux community in the face when they wrote the MPL.

        I'd say that the only difference between Mozilla developers and NASA is that the Moz developers paid their own way, while NASA has been funded by me (and you too, if you're in the US). That gives me a right to criticise NASA which I really don't have for Mozilla. The vital difference is that when the Moz developers license their code, it's really their code. When NASA licenses ``their code'', it's partly mine, in the sense that you and I paid for it.

        I think there's one other difference, too: didn't Mozilla at least attempt to dual-license, using MPL and GPL? So, I'd say that NASA is morally bound to behave better than this, and isn't living up to their moral obligations, while the Moz team has behaved rather better than they absolutely had to.

        Would you react this way if NASA had decided to release all of the code under a BSD-type license, ...

        No. The BSD license, or public domain, would allow us to actually USE the code we paid to develop, in the sense of incorporating it into our own works. The MPL precludes that sort of use. That's what makes it a slap in the face of the Linux community, specifically.

        ... creating essentially the same situation, ...

        In essence, the situation is totally different, as I just explained.

        ... but without quite as much benefit to NASA?

        Here's an important but apparently subtle distinction: NASA exists to serve the US citizens, and is funded by them. NOT ``We exist to serve them, and fund them.''

        Again, I, and every other citizen, have paid for the work NASA has done. We should be allowed to make use of it on equal terms. GPL licensing would allow that: everyone could use the work equally, and no-one could obtain a monopoly over it. We start equal, and stay that way. That's fair to all. RedHat and Cygnus and Trolltech show us that you can build a business on the GPL, and IBM and others have shown that existing megacorps can profit from the GPL.

        A BSD-style license would allow authors of GPL'd software to reuse the code, but would allow, at least potentially, someone to obtain a monopoly using the code. I object to that.

        The MPL has at least the same problems as the BSD licese, plus at least the additional problem that MPL'ed code cannot be linked to GPL'ed code. I keep saying ``at least'' because unlike the GPL, the MPL is full of lawyer-speak, and will require long and careful parsing, with a copy of Black's close at hand.

        I object to using such a license as the MPL for code for which I have been forced to pay. The GPL seems an acceptable choice for code which we have ALL been forced to pay for, with the BSD license running a very distant second. MPL really isn't in the running, as far as I'm concerned.

  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Beatbyte ( 163694 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:45PM (#5974188) Homepage
    43 more moons were discovered orbiting Jupiter. All of which are now named Firebird.

  • They already use open source software (Score:3, Informative)

    by witten ( 5796 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:48PM (#5974212) Homepage
    I used to work at NASA Ames, starting back in 1996. On a daily basis, I used Perl, Apache, and all the GNU tools I could get my hands on. And this wasn't just a lone coder using this software either. Everyone on the project [nasa.gov] used open source software either directly or indirectly.

    So it's really great that some people within NASA are making a more formal push for open source software, and are even discussing releasing some of their own, but open source within NASA is hardly new!

  • How about this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BigBir3d ( 454486 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @01:53PM (#5974253) Journal
    Why not advocate choosing the best possible package? Who cares if it is open / closed / hybrid source, as long as it functions properly?
  • If memory serves there was a big stink about NASA (Johnson Space Center Houston) switching their administrative desktops from Macs to Windows just a few years ago. If they kept all of the Mac hardware they could probably ressurect them as Linux terminals.

  • Nice to hear about this, but I doubt... (Score:3, Informative)

    by vought ( 160908 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @02:02PM (#5974324)
    that Dan Goldin, a.k.a. "the man who replaced all the Macs" at NASA would stand for it. He is FIRMLY in the Microsoft camp, and in 1997 appeared as a booster in Microsoft advertisements for Windows NT 4.0.

    Goldin replaced perfectly good I.T. infrastructure with Microsoft equipment in the name of standardization; it says a lot about the entrenched bullshit beaurocracy at NASA that he rose so meteorically through the ranks at the Space Administration.
    • Well, if Dan Goldin was still NASA Administrator you might have a point, but Sean O'Keefe [nasa.gov] has been in charge for about, oh, 18 months now...

      Also, Goldin didn't rise through the ranks at NASA. He came over from 25 year career at TRW to head up the agency, although he had worked at NASA in the early 1960s.

  • I know someone who is obsessed with reading source code. He keeps printouts in his bathroom for some light reading. He knows the Linux kernel inside and out. He regularly submits patchs all over the place. He would drool over the idea of reading code for satellites and the shuttle.

    An old ledged has it that Djkstra saved the Apollo moon landing, because he happened across some code at NASA and questioned a minus sign in the thrust calculation. Turns out that the lander was set to thrust into the moon and no

  • IIRC, the code in some of the network drivers in the linux kernel have been written and/or modified by NASA in the past. Also, they also started the Beowulf [beowulf.org] stuff giving rise to all those wonderful "imagine..." posts we get round here.

    The more imaginative may notice a link here; essentially, NASA needed good networking in their Beowulf nodes, so they tweaked the drivers.

  • I work at NASA/Ames as a senior software engineer in the Automated Software Engineering group [nasa.gov] and I reviewed Patrick's [nasa.gov] report a month ago. Patrick's report is the result of his efforts to convince management that it would be a good thing to release the scientific computing software [nasa.gov] that he had written to the public.

    I am in a research lab working on software engineering tools and most of us would love to release the tools that we develop as Open Source. Unfortunately, we need to get the administration's support. (We've been trying for over a year on a software model checker named Java Path Finder and haven't had any luck yet.) We have other stuff like an C++ AST language model (in XML/Java) that we are currently developing that would also be nice to release.

    I can understand the administration's desire to keep the software ownership for itself, but the greater good would be for us to release the tools under GPL. Especially, since the opportunities for commericialization are much more limited than they were a few years ago. Releasing the tools as Open Source would make them available to many more people and dramatically increase the impact of the work. A further complication was mentioned in the report is that we have a lot of contractors (~40%?) and the IP ownership is determined by the particular contract. *sigh*

    We also use a lot Open Source code, including linux, x11, xemacs, ssh, gcc, cvs, etc. and it would be nice to give something back to the community.

  • A long-term issue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by real gumby ( 11516 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:02PM (#5974858)
    NASA Ames was Cygnus's first customer back in 1989. Support for GCC, GDB and the binutils. I know, I signed the contract.

    Most of the parts of NASA that aren't politicized are really very good. NASA will go for anything that really gets the job done.

  • It's more about publishing software than using it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JacobKreutzfeld ( 614589 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:03PM (#5974863)
    Most of the discussion here has focused on NASA using OSS but it IMHO misses the point. The author is talking about publishing or releasing NASA-developed code, and what types of licenses are compatible with NASA's federally-mandated mission. NASA develops quite a bit of code, including generally-useful tools as part of larger projects. It would be great if this was easily accessible to the public.

    It's disappointing seeing how much bureaucracy I'd have to go through to release our secure HTTP and CIFS proxy/portal. We don't have time to work on it any longer and superior commercial products exist now. So why not give our code away, let interested hackers turn it into something really cool. But it would be a nightmare of approvals, especially his citation from the NASA Procedures and Guideline ( http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/library/displayDir.cfm ?Internal_ID=N_PG_2210_001A_&page_name=main&search _term=2210 [nasa.gov] )

    This release category indicates there are no export restrictions on the software and should be approved with great care and requires concurrence by Agency Export Control officials.
    I don't expect officials are really gonna want to read our code to ensure there's nothing of value to cryptoporn terrorists.

    So the code with just languish in our CVS repo, and die due to lack of interest. :-(

  • About the only way this is a coup for OSS is that most Americans could care less if some other country they can't find on a map makes a decision to go open source. (Seeing as how many can't find Canada on a map, let alone a state they don't live in, this makes sense.)

  • Everyone knows... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Friday May 16, 2003 @03:27PM (#5975035) Homepage
    ...it's just a plan by NASA to get Microsoft to pay for a new Shuttle program.

  • Internationally? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At work (I'm a scientist) we wanted to use some software developed by NASA. It was available for 200 hundred dollars, which is fine. What isn't fine is that in the end we couldnt buy it because our lab is based in the UK and thus "our tax dollars" hadnt gone into its creation.

    No great shakes, I wrote my own version over a weekend (which tells you something about how sensitive or proprietry this stuff was, *and* it was about 12 years old) but it was a weekend I would rather have had off work.

    Point is this,

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