NASA Prepares to Open Source Code 330
comforteagle writes "According to this story at O'Reilly, NASA is looking for approval for their own open source license. The NASA submitter (lawyer of course) states that none of the current licenses meet their needs, but more interesting is that NASA needs a license at all. It makes one wonder what we, and other space agencies, might see coming out off NASA. It's also nice to see code that taxpayers paid for anyway being released for their use too. There must be at least one slashdotter who could dream up a use for NASA software. X Prize participants maybe?"
Government Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought all goverment programs were automatically uncopyrighted, not even public domain? Like they were completely outside of the copyright system.
Re:Government Copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
That is exactly the point here. I'm working as a contractor on one of the pieces of software that started this effort. Basically, we'd like to release the software as open source so that we can get universities and others involved in the project, but still retain some level of control over it (and get some free publicity at the same time).
The goal isn't to keep others out of the process -- it's to get others involved, while making sure the final software product is of high quality. After all, if the software you're building is being used to fly spacecraft, you want to be sure it gives accurate answers.
Re:Government Copyright (Score:3, Informative)
I'm having a heck of a time finding what NASA's position is on giving the code away. Issues
Re:Government Copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been involved with several contracts where we (largish aerospace firm) were concerned about that if we developed code under contract to the government ultimately we'd be giving that code away to our competitors. So unless the original government request-for-proposal said that they
Re:Government Copyright (Score:4, Informative)
This is NOT a troll... the Skunkworks was the REALLY COOL department of Lockheed Martin that created all of their super-secret, very cool stuff.
Check out this link [habu.org] for some of the books written about them.
Personally, I'd be VERY interested in some of their code.
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
From Section 201, Copyright Act of 1976
(a) Copyright in a work protected under this title vests initially in the author or authors of the work. The authors of a joint work are co-owners of copyright in the work.
(b) In the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author for purposes of this title, and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.
Re:Government Copyright (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Informative)
U.S. Code Title 17 Chapter 1 Section 101: and from Section 105: Although I will say that NASA seems to act like it owns the copyright on the images it produces.
Re:Government Copyright (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to be pretty clear to me: [nasa.gov]
loopholes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Government Copyright (Score:5, Interesting)
---John Holmes...
Absolutely (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely there is. I can think of a number of potential applications of NASA image processing software to our research in neuroscience. Right now, we are having to either purchase code written for the GIS markets to do what we want, custom write routines in a language such as IDL, or get some computer science graduate students to work for us custom creating code. We are doing the first two and I am going to start recruiting CS grad. students next week, but things might go a lot faster if we already had a source code base to start with.
Re:Absolutely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Absolutely (Score:5, Funny)
void mars_lander()
{
int dist;
dist = to_ground(position,z);
* let's see what happens when we comment the
* conversion!
*
/
land(dist);
}
Re:Absolutely (Score:4, Funny)
--
Re:Absolutely (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://ilab.usc.edu)
Re:Absolutely (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Absolutely (Score:5, Informative)
Please contact a NASA center and start asking around about doing joint research. NASA has a lot of research funding that requires joint work with a university, but you've got to hook up with the right researcher to get it. Every NASA center has an office that will help you find the people most likely to help you.
Believe me, if you need that image processing code and you are a university, a joint research agreement will get you a lot of help. If you need some other kind of code, and you think NASA has it, start calling around! It may be a bit of work, but you'll be surprised how eager many NASA researchers are to work with you.
Re:Absolutely (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I really, really really want and need the famed VISAR (Video Image Stabilization and Registration) software. This was used recently by to improve the quality in the security camera video in the recent abduction and murder of Carlie Brucia [baltimoresun.com].
"Commercialized by Intergraph"? Where's my check from Intergraph then? If it was developed with tax dollars, it should be open sourced so it can be commercialized (or not) by everyone. That will have the most salutary effect on the economy - not one, but dozens of companies improving the quality of video.
Almost a dumb comment (Score:3, Insightful)
My first reaction was along the lines of "hunh?? Is he kidding"
I could easily see a lot of interesting things coming out of NASA labs and projects...
Re:Absolutely (Score:4, Informative)
Specifically, I am interested in code that can perform automated image mosaicing, also automated registration of images obtained through different modalities and code that will allow unsupervised k-means and/or ISODATA image classification/clustering of multispectral images.
Re:Absolutely (Score:3, Interesting)
NASA/USGS Image Processing Software (Score:5, Informative)
This is probably the package you are looking for: Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers [usgs.gov]. It's been distributed freely for many years, and is, indeed, public domain. It's funded by NASA for use by NASA-funded researchers and the planetary science community in general.
Note, Isis 3.0 has not been released yet, look for the beta in coming months - look at Isis 2.1 for the stable release. Download/Install instructions are on this page: Isis 2.1 Installation Guide [usgs.gov].
Automatic mosaicking is generally done using the spacecraft positioning information. Automatic registration? It doesn't exist (yet). Registration involves varying levels of human intervention, and when some level of automation is achieved, it's mission-specific and under special circumstances. Isis is primarily a cartographic package - IDL is generally used for statistical work.
Another image processing package that's public domain is USGS MIPS [usgs.gov]. It's a (non-NASA) terrestrial image processing package that evolved from the same roots as Isis, so you'll find it has many of the same capabilities.
I don't know what other NASA packages there might be out there like this, if there are any. I'll ask around.
Re:NASA/USGS Image Processing Software (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the problem we face. With imagery obtained from the light and electron microscope, there is no embedded fiducial information. Therefore, we need to use some degree of correlation or image comparison to mosaic images.
Automatic registration? It doesn't exist (yet).
Yeah, this is indeed why I want a couple of CS grad students to work on the problem as we have different "types" of images that are really of the sam
Sad (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no need for that kind of anti-proprietary bullying, is there?
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
And as I was just looking at the Windows 95 source to fix a few of those annoying bugs I was thingking, "Good thing Microsoft used the BSD TCP/IP stack, otherwise they'd have gone broke trying to sell an OS that 'didn't do the internet' and their code wouldn't be open source."
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be offensive. It's an important point about licensing we should all understand.
Yes, you can check out the BSD TCP/IP stack source.
No you cannot see how Micorsoft ported it to wor
Re:Public domain for gov't software is best (Score:3, Interesting)
Good for whom ?
Is the freedom to not share improvements a good thing for NASA, who originally paid to have the software developed ?
Is it good for the tax payers, who'll need to pay twice to get access to the derived work ?
(Once for NASA's contract, once for the repackaged commercial software)
Last but not least, is it good for the company who originally wrote the software
NASA, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:NASA, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Until that point in time, treat NASA with some respect.
Re:NASA, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:NASA, eh? (Score:2)
Re:NASA, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Do it now! (Score:5, Funny)
RE: NASA Prepares to Open Source Code (Score:5, Funny)
NASA'Sdoom (Score:2, Funny)
Re:NASA'Sdoom (Score:5, Interesting)
My question is: how much would we learn from this? When people writing code for business are optimizing for speed and redundancy mainly in the parallel sense (i.e., a failsafe swap to a sister server), how RELEVANT is that to blocks of code written never, ever, ever, ever, ever to fail on tested but "outdated" hardware?
Furthermore, if we ever get around to privately-built spacecraft, how much NASA code will they want to use? I dunno, it's a neat idea in an historical sense, and it's an admirable sign of government openness when the government is more and more closed to us citizens... but is it more?
I'm not saying it's not. I'm just curious how it would be. Is NASA
Or maybe not?
Re:NASA'Sdoom (Score:4, Informative)
But code quality aside, what about applications elsewhere? NASA's codebase presumably does a wide variety of things in addition to running gazillion-ly redundant life support on the space shuttle. Think about all the design and testing it does of hardware, the software it writes for image processing and signal analysis, running the deep space network. How about making models of satellite structural integrity? Surely something useful -- although it might take someone within the field to realize the similarity between a problem they face and one NASA has already solved.
And, of course, scientists love to write their own tools for text editing, data analysis (often these are incredibly powerful and extendable -- naturally more so than, say, commercial software products which remain close-sourced), collaboration software, yadda yadda ad infinitum
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Insightful)
space agencies in other countries too? (Score:5, Interesting)
They would probably only release code which would not benefint most people don't you think?
Re:space agencies in other countries too? (Score:3, Interesting)
If we keep working on this independently, we will have a much harder time of accomplish
Re:space agencies in other countries too? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality of the situation is, the iss orbit is not where it is to 'satisfy the Russians', it's to satifsy the laws of physics. There are two ways to achieve an on orbit rendevous, the first is to go charging up to orbit, and then later maneuver the orbit to match that of the target. This can be hugely wasteful in terms of energy expended in maneuvering. The second method is to wait for the target object to be on an overhead pass, so that a pure ballistic trajectory can take you directly from launch to the on orbit rendevous. This is the most efficient method of launch, allows the maximum payload delivery for a given launch vehicle.
The ISS orbit is determined by simple ballistics. It's where it is to provide maximum availability of direct launch windows from the Kennedy Space Center AND the Balkinor launch facilities. With shuttles all parked in the garage, I suspect there's a lot of folks at nasa today that are quite thankful for the decision to place ISS in an orbit that provides equal accessibility for the Soyuz and Progress vehicles. With no shuttle missions bringing up the groceries, it's very important that those progress launches pack in every possible pound of payload when they do get sent up.
Like everything else in life, ISS decisions are often a big compromise, most compromises are driven by physics, others by politics. To many uninformed folks, much of the decision making driven by physics appears to be political, because they dont understand the reality of the situation. Orbit selection for ISS was not chosen to 'satisfy the russians', but to optimize availability of resources in many scenarios. Lack of shuttle availability was one of those scenarios, and today it's reality. The ISS orbit is skewed a little from optimum shuttle inclinations due to the lifting capacities of the progress vehicles. With 20/20 hindsight, this was a brilliant decision. At the time, it appeared political to americans. It wasn't, it was driven by the need to have contingencies available in the event of prolonged periods of unavailble shuttles. We are currently a year into one of those periods.
Text of Article Here: (Score:2, Informative)
Open Source: NASA's Open Source Licensing
Posted Feb 12, 2004 - 11:45 AM
Bryan A. Geurts, Patent Attorney, for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has submitted a first draft of their NASA OPEN SOURCE AGREEMENT to the Open Source Initiative for approval. (No link available at publishing time)
More interesting is that fact that they are looking for such approval. The obvious question is what will be released to the community and other space agencies once the license
Not limited to space applications, by any means! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not limited to space applications, by any means (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you certain of this?
MER's stereo imaging and navigation software is indeed well made. Still, I suspect it's incorrect to claim that it is the best ever written. Stereo imaging and 3-D structure from motion are very well established fields, and improvement is ongoing. It would probably be straightforward for you to find some recent conference papers and code up something in MATLAB that works better than the rover's flight software.
The quality of the 3d ranging results from Mars are impressive, but for more reasons than you might suspect. I spent summer 2002 interning at JPL. One day, Mark Maimone, the MER mobility software engineer, mentioned to me that images of Martian terrain (with scattered rocks, etc.) are just about mathematically optimal for stereo ranging. (He wrote his thesis [cmu.edu] on this stuff.) On Mars, it's easy to find correlations between pixel patterns in images. Now imagine how well it would work if the robot were staring at a blank wall--no vision algorithm can handle that!
So--don't think that the success of the imaging is just the well-made software.
JPL has a lot of experience in robotics and the gain in knowledge when such code is released is sure to be great for anyone in the field of robotics.
True, to a point. Bear in mind that while JPL does work on novel robotics research, they're also extremely concerned about preserving expensive, hard-to-replace robot systems. As a result, a lot of the software is based on well-established systems that, in the research world, have been surpassed a while ago. The rover autonomous navigation software, for example, is related to navigation software written here at Carnegie Mellon some four or five years ago.
Furthermore, a lot of the research advances made by JPL are presented at conferences and published in journals. It's not like they work in isolation and keep everything quiet. In fact, some of my fellow grad students work on large projects alongside JPL researchers and researchers at other institutions. So, in an academic sense, there's already a lot of sharing going on.
--Tom
Re:Not limited to space applications, by any means (Score:3, Informative)
"We?" (Score:3, Funny)
Is this guy referring to Slashdot?
since (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe now... (Score:5, Funny)
ITAR ITAR ITAR (Score:4, Informative)
For those asleep at the keyboard, ITAR is International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
For example, check out Flight Linux:
http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/
You'll note that even though required by the GPL, NASA refuses to release the sources because of ITAR prohibitions.
Move along, there is nothing to see here.
Re:ITAR ITAR ITAR (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it would be nice if they'd realize that a Real Time Embedded OS is not a munition or a satellite control system itself. I understand them not wanting to release the apps that run on it, but surely they could contribute most of the patches to the kernel that they use.
Re:ITAR ITAR ITAR (Score:3, Informative)
As for "Wrap in cobalt" you must've been watching too much star trek...
Civilization might be global but there's absolutely no reason why the US should share technology as advanced as some of the space tech is with the rest of the worl
image enhancement (Score:2)
Hmm, how about the image enhancement software for CCD's that they've been sitting on for years...
Looking through their list of "problems", seems to be mostly self-imposed or over-exaggerated problems. Like indemnifying the US government- the GPL already -does- that...then there's the bit about not endorsing things(which explains the proliferation of "space" pens and "developed by NASA" foam pillows/mattresses).
Home NASA project? (Score:5, Funny)
Darwin Award, maybe?
When's it coming out? (Score:5, Funny)
Nasa Home Project.. :-) (Score:3, Funny)
no more dog poop on the lawn
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
They've released stuff before (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine a Beow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever use a network card under Linux, much of the networking code came from NASA (mostly from Donald Becker).
Still dreaming about that Beowulf cluster? That also came out of NASA.
Perhaps the lawyers felt left out, so they're trying to do thier part and look useful. Why would NASA find that a license that has served them well for years needs replacing? Any lawyers opine on the new license yet?
YES! Please release NASA code. (Score:2)
One possible thing.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This might be one possible use for such a thing.
GJC
Good imaging software (Score:5, Funny)
About time (Score:5, Interesting)
For those wondering about the software produced, they employ folks from all branches of knowledge. Except finance, me thinks.
I hope this catches on... (Score:4, Interesting)
I just hope the sharing might keep going if it starts being seen as a good thing. For some reason, I get the impression we'll get some crazy results too, like French agencies stipulating that no documents may be translated to non-French and still be visible in France. Still, it's definetly problems I'd rather have to deal with then not.
Ryan Fenton
Can't wait. (Score:3, Funny)
30 years from now, Man finally lands on Mars, and finds one of the 2010 batch of rovers, and, spelled out in its tire tracks...
"FIRST POST!"
A proposed omnibus space commercialization act (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing new... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cosmic.uga.edu/
In fact for awhile they operated out of one of the many buildings previously occupied by the 40 Watt Club
Since 1998 the code has been available through the Open Channel Foundation
http://www.openchannelfoundation.org/cosmic/
Nasa open source code (Score:3, Interesting)
Why a license at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why a license at all? (Score:3, Informative)
Not free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Software, is requested to register with NASA by visiting the following
website...
I doubt this statement satisfies the open-source definition. I am *certain* that it doesn't satisfy the Debian Free Software definition, because it fails both the "desert island" and the "chinese dissident" tests.
Stupid Question? (Score:3, Insightful)
LS
Re:Stupid Question? (Score:4, Informative)
As for the rest, well, that's why we have the Freedom of Information Act. If you want source code for the accounting system for the Bureau of Public Works, put in an FOIA request and they'll either give it to you (for the cost of distribution, I guess) or give you a good reason why they won't.
NPR is not a government agency, but a private nonprofit organization, so your questions don't apply to it. However, even if it were, the government tends to use "industry standard" formats, and Real could certainly be considered that. As an example, all the forms on the IRS web site are in PDF, and they recommend (free but commercial) Acrobat Reader for viewing. Probably a lot of other files are available as Word documents, since that's how they are produced.
Re:National Security (Score:3, Funny)
Yes.
This is not open-source (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read the license quickly and I can definitely say that section 3F will cause problems. Requiring registration does not meet the open-source definition, nor the Debian free software guideline. It discriminates people who either 1) do not have access to the Internel (the "desert island" test) 2) people who can't say they are using the software (the "chinese dissident" test). It also prevents any inclusion in a distribution because it implies that merely buying a Linux distribution that includes the software requires you to register it. If you forget, you are breaking the law (just imagine if all software was released under this license).
Last thing, by requiring registration, this license seems to cover the *use* of the software, going even further that what copyright law requests. The GPL gives you rights that copyright law alone does not give you (e.g. right to redistribute the code), but it does not *remove* rights (line the right to use the software without telling anyone). This also means that to be valid, the license would actually have to be signed (hence it becomes a contract). The GPL (or other free software licenses) does not require that since it only gives you additional rights (if you don't agree to the GPL, you still have all rights provided by copyright laws).
Re:This is not open-source (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but 3F is phrased as a request, not a requirement. So they ask that people that use their software (or enhance it) let them know, but aren't conditioning the license on them doing so. I'd guess that since it can be ignored, it doesn't really belong in the license, but it doesn't do any harm there.
I have an idea for use of NASA code (Score:3, Interesting)
Public Domain (Score:3, Interesting)
Can anyone comment on this? IANAL.
Some already out there (Score:3, Interesting)
Pathfinder software archive [aaai.org]
CLIPS [ghg.net]
: A Tool for Building Expert Systems. Maintained by Gary Riley.
fuzzyCLIPS [iit.nrc.ca]
Some other NASA soft:
COBWEB/3 (ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov) ?
AUTOCLASS AutoClass is an unsupervised Bayesian classification system for independent data.
PRODIGY cs.cmu.edu Integrated Planning and Learning System
getting NASA source hasn't been 'rocket science' (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, something like 8 years ago I was doing some work with a then-new thermal imaging system, running on an Unix / big-endian hardware platform. I needed to extract data from the images and had done so in the past with data sets collected and processed on dos & os/2.
On contacting the vendor for data formats etc I was told that a group at NASA was doing the same thing so I contacted them and they were able and willing to send me their sources. No license, no problem.
Honestly the results were pretty disappointing. The code was less well-done than what I'd written 2 years before and I didn't / don't consider myself to be all that strong a 'C' coder.
Now I've also seen some of their technology-access programs some of which were effectively free (beer sense for those who care) and programs which were arranged to recoup the costs of 'supporting' something for external release.
All code I've worked with on all of these bases was non-polished stuff, no or little cleanup around the typical hacks involved in in-house development. (i.e. it's great stuff and well suited for moving to open source)
What a crock... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been wondering what this is all about, having worked at GSFC for some time. I believe that documents (including software) created by NASA cannot be copyrighted, since the U.S. government is not eligible to be a copyright holder under U.S. law (I am not a lawyer). In fact, for code created entirely by civil servants (i.e. NASA-created code) there is a clause thaty says "No copyright is claimed in the United States...", indicating that the work is in that case in the public domain.
The license might be valid for contractor-created code, but (as has been pointed out) the GPL serves pretty well. I (and many, many others) have been creating "NASA software" and distributing it under the GPL, BSD license, Perl Artistic license, and others for years. The main point of the NASA license appears to be to aid in tracking of the software and non-abuse of the NASA name. The former is probably better served by a polite request rather than a license requirement; and the latter appears to be a problem mainly for the paranoid minds of NASA's legal team.
It would be a real shame if NASA contracts and grants started requiring this license on any software developed under grant -- that would fuck up contributions to dozens of open-source projects that benefit mightily from NASA research.
Imagine if every patch a NASA-funded scientist submitted to (say) Perl had a NASA license attached rather than the Artistic License. That would certainly prevent such patches or contributions being included.
Re:Old? (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA does a lot of stuff, and much of it is indeed cutting-edge. Don't discount this so quickly.
Re:Old? (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, nedit [nedit.org], a great editor for people coming from Windows/Mac, was developed by Fermilab, a particle physics laboratory.
Re:Old? (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is more advanced than what's in use for a lot of traffic signal control boxes. They have something like 8 bytes of memory. But they really don't have to do much... just get data about where the cars are, and turn the right lights green for the right amount of time (while not allowing the opposing lights to be green).
The reason they use such "archaic" hardware, even in brand-new boxes, is because they have to withstand ambient temperatures up to 150 degrees farenheit for long periods of the day. The boxes can't be ventilated very much without exposing them to the elements (and destructive teenagers), and it gets hot as an oven inside when the sun is hitting them all day.
I imagine all kinds of infrastructure that needs redundancy and reliability over flexibility and power would find NASA's code useful in one way or another. (Even if it's just as an example of what NOT to do.
Re:Old? (Score:3, Informative)
While I can't vouch for this information personally, a friend of mine who does microprocessor design once told me that slower processors are used beca
Re:Old? (Score:2)
Re:Old? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there might be a few "Holy crap you can do that!?!?!!?" moments reading those sources. Tight optimizations, tricks for doing things that normally require massive support libraries linked together... might be some interesting techniques there.
Re:Old? (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, the opposite is true. Older code is generally leaner, more stable, and much tighter than newer code.
Crap code tends to get weeded out, and good code tends to stick. Witness many of the key parts of Unix which have remained largely unchanged for decade(s).
Why change what is clearly working well?
There's a perception in the computing industry that "old==bad" and "new==good". But in many areas, the opposite is clearly true.
Security algorithms, for example. Only when an encryption algorithm has been out for a while, beaten up, tested, reviewed, and studied by many peers will people begin to trust it.
There's always the risk of a short-cut to decrypting any algorithm, so, in general, the older ones are nearly always better.
But let's put it to the test... You're getting a pacemaker on which your life will depend. Do you prefer the 15 year old software that has an installed base of many thousands, or the new stuff that just came out last month?
Re:no GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be flat out wrong for tax supported software to be made and then not be able to be used by businesses that helped pay for the software.
Re:no GPL (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it "stealing"? If it was released to the public, you can light your candle from it and the corporations can light their candles from it. You aren't robbed of light if someone else has it also. I think they should be able to do what they want with their copy. Or are you really just some sort of "IP" shill?
Re:Rocket Scientist? (Score:2)
Re:Public Doman. (Score:3, Informative)
Incidentally, if you remember NASA's old distribution system, COSMIC [uga.edu], Open Channel does have some COSMIC softare [openchanne...dation.org] available. But I see that same "private use" license there.
COSMIC (1966-1998, R.I.P.) policy included: