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Navy Commissions Open Source R&D

Posted by Zonk on Fri Mar 25, 2005 10:27 PM
from the penguins-with-pips dept.
Software United States Linux
Lin_Matt writes "OSSI has announced a three year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy to explore and expand the usage of Open Source Software. Barry Duplantis of Red Hat will be serving as the Program Manager for this CRADA which will cover the Navy's use of OSS within the Naval Oceanographic Office's Web services, scientific computing and enterprise architecture systems."
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  • OSS to the rescue (Score:5, Funny)

    by crypto55 (864220) on Friday March 25 2005, @10:31PM (#12052002)
    Excellent. Maybe now Microsoft won't be invading every crevice of our military... Speaking of Microsoft, when does skynet come online?

  • An interesting anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nate nice (672391) on Friday March 25 2005, @10:35PM (#12052024) Journal
    I worked with a man who was a Marine and had a couple years in the Airforce. He wasn't the "brightest" guy in the world but had a lot of military experience and could talk about it all day. He didn't like UNIX much in the service because he said their equipment didn't work well often. But with the Windows based systems, things worked a lot better and were much easier for soldiers to use. I'm not sure what this has to do with this article but I assume we should listen to these kinds of statements to see how we can make Linux based systems more reliable and easy to use for people that depend on a system they can use under extreme stress and fatigue.
    • I'm not sure what this has to do with this article but I assume we should listen to these kinds of statements to see how we can make Linux based systems more reliable and easy to use for people that depend on a system they can use under extreme stress and fatigue.
      No, Windows is great for embedding into things like bullets and munitions. Just as long as the Blue Scream of Death is that of our enemies and not us.

      • No, Windows is great for embedding into things like bullets and munitions. Just as long as the Blue Scream of Death is that of our enemies and not us. I thought it was the other way around.... it being good to embed bullets and munitions into windows.
      • No, Windows is great for embedding into things like bullets and munitions.

        Yeah, I can just see the smiles on the soldiers faces when they go to fire their smart weapon, and the bullet needs authenticating because they replaced the firing pin earlier that day...
    • Well, the UNIX equipment he's referring to is probably kludgy old special-purpose machines, for controlling radars and such. Linux is a general (and special) purpose operating system that also runs on the same equipment as Windows.

      The Windows based systems are presumably the same sort of computers the soldiers use at home, no wonder they are more familiar and easier. Stick Linux on those computers and order people to use it.
        • You're thinking like a civilian, but the military isn't about sharing and freedom. They will evaluate open source software, and if they find it worthy of expanded use, they will use it. And "force" is a pretty strong word to use, if OSS is truly better, the users will eventually realize that and embrace it. If it's not better, well, that's what this research is for.
    • He didn't like UNIX much in the service because he said their equipment didn't work well often.

      It may be that the applications written for the UNIX boxes were the problem. Windows doesn't have a monopoly on poorly written applications. If a application uses a lot of the memory and dives into a memory hogging infinite loop, it isn't pretty, whether it is a Windows box or UNIX box.

      It could possibly be the hardware itself. The military often has their computers in places that aren't the most hardware-fri

  • ethics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by delirium of disorder (701392) on Friday March 25 2005, @11:06PM (#12052150) Homepage Journal
    If Free and Open Source software aquires a stronghold in the US military, what will the effect be on the more idealistic side of the Free Software movement? Richard Stallman is known to be opposed to the military industrial complex. Could we see an anti-military GPL that allows normal use except in orginizations who's express purpose is to kill people? I think many open source coders would, if they could, liscence their software in a way that would ban or restrict the right of the US war machine to use it.
    • Essentially, this would be the same as focused political action groups taking on issues that stretch outside their regular domain. (For example, Sierra Club takes a particular stance on family planning in the US under the guise of population control.) What happens is that support for the organization wanes, as people who believe in the organization's original founding principles but not the arbitrarily added ones are forced to decide between dropping their support or compromising their beliefs.

      Besides, t
    • Could we see an anti-military GPL that allows normal use except in orginizations who's express purpose is to kill people?

      No, because :

      (1) assassination guilds are illegal, and so ignore copyright law

      (2) The purpose of the military is to defend or sieze land, not kill people. (Military strategy holds that wounding is generally preferrable to killing--makes the casualty more of a drain for the other side.)

      (3) Amending the GPL couldn't do that much; either you'd have to make an incompatbile fork, or yo
      • Since abortion clinics in the US have killed more people last year than the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines together in the last 20 years,

        Please back up your "facts". So far the estimates that the US armed forces directly contributed/caused more than 100,000 deaths in Iraq alone (since invasion)http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl? s id=04/10/29/138232&tid=103&tid=219 [slashdot.org]

        The amount of deaths caused directly (bombing) or indirectly in 1990s is unknown. If US took care of Saddam back in 1990,

      • Not likely. RMS has already stated that Free Software should not be restricted from use for a particular purpose. He even used the example of Free Software being not restricted by use from either an abortion clinic or an anti-abortion campaigner.

        I prefer Theo de Raadt's hypothetical baby mulching machines [neohapsis.com].

        • I don't have recent military stats on hand but you might find these informative:

          http://www.htmlbible.com/abortstats.htm
          http:// www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats.h tml

          More people have been killed in fighting over land than in the name of that "stupid Christian god". That doesn't make land evil, but by your implications, we should abolish all land.

        • abortion clinics haven't killed a single person.

          neither did the workers at Auschwitz, eh?

          It's easy to de-humanize, isn't it. It's usually the first step in justifying murder.

          • Please don't compare a mass of cells that doesn't have a past and doesn't think with innocent, thinking persons with distinct personality, thoughts, dreams, pasts, relationships with other human beings, murdered and tortured under a crazy regime for no good reason at all. You're only making a fool of yourself. Really.
            • I am curious:

              Do you really believe that your experiences and relationships are all that makes you more than just a "mass of cells"?

              Do you even know when neural activity develops in people? 45 days, dude.

              At 8 weeks in the womb you were completely formed: all of your organs were functioning, you even urinated and had finger prints. At this age you felt pain (you would have moved away from a needle had it been inserted at this point), you kicked, moved your feet, toes and fingers, and even made a strong fi
              • I said that thoughts, experiences, relationship and dreams make us more than a mass of cells. The only thing a mass of humans cells have at the 8 weeks point is a relationship with it's parents; if they both decide that they made a very bad mistake and don't want the kid, then let it be and respect their decision. You can get emotional if you want, but I have my point of view.

                And if the bum beneath the bridge doesn't think, nor remember his past, nor has friends nor dreams, don't bother 'aborting' him, he'
          • Once you eliminate poverty, provide knowledge and insentive, the number of abortions will drop drasticly.

            Personally, I am not "pro-life". I am "pro-choice", but there should be consequences for getting abortions. I mean, if people are stupid enough to get/cause pregnancy and do not *want* the child (ie. not a medical reason), then they should be able to get an abortion. Then you sterilize them so they will not make the mistake again.

            Is this is a fair compromise for "your side"?

            PS. Many "workers" in Au

            • Personally, I am not "pro-life". I am "pro-choice", but there should be consequences for getting abortions. I mean, if people are stupid enough to get/cause pregnancy and do not *want* the child (ie. not a medical reason), then they should be able to get an abortion. Then you sterilize them so they will not make the mistake again.

              Is this is a fair compromise for "your side"?

              Not quite. It still results in a life being ended with no wrong done on their part, and them having no say in the matter. That is

  • Good to hear (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 33degrees (683256) <33degrees@noSpam.gmail.com> on Friday March 25 2005, @11:07PM (#12052158)
    I think government is one of the areas where going open-source makes the most sense; I'd much rather see tax-payer money go into FOSS than Microsoft's pockets...

  • CRADAs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by geomon (78680) on Friday March 25 2005, @11:10PM (#12052176) Homepage Journal
    I've worked on two CRADAs and I don't think you should put too much hope in them.

    I came in at the last part of one CRADA were we deveolped a new way of doing geologic testing. By the time the finalists had been selected we began testing, running qual/quant analysis on the data, and made improvements to increase productivity. The product was offered almost immediately for private work. That was the great promise of the CRADA; faster time to market for high frontier scientific advances.

    It has been 12 years since that CRADA was completed and the technology is just now beginning to adapt to the demands that the orignal development agreement envisioned. While the time to commercialize the product outside has been slow, we did use the technology for selected drilling projects.

    The second one started about when the last one ended. We are just now (10 years later) getting to the field with our other remote sensing projects. And as in the case of the drilling CRADA, the only customer at this point is the federal government.

    Which brings up an interesting question: "Would the development happen faster or slower without the government involvement?" I think the getting the govenment involved just muddies the water. The only benefit to government agencies from a CRADA is the intellectual property aspects. But if you only had only one customer in the world, would you make your IP an issue, or you you just quote a price?

    Know what I mean?
  • "causing a ship-wide crash that leaves the most formidable weapons system on the planet totally helpless and dead in the water."

    Just like NT did with a naval destroyer a few years back.

    Linux has just reached at the very least the NT level of complexity.

  • Navy's been doing great for a while (Score:5, Informative)

    by Effugas (2378) * on Friday March 25 2005, @11:19PM (#12052204) Homepage
    More of the same, not that I've got any problem with that!

    For instance, the Navy's Proteanforge [navy.mil] is fantastic on so many levels it's not even funny. Besides being one of the few public Sourceforge deployements outside of sf.net, the code there is just wildly interesting, and has been for several years now.

    Not to mention the funding the Navy put into Onion Routing Research [onion-router.net] and it's very popular implementation [eff.org].

  • Nothing new, but a really big step (Score:5, Insightful)

    by happyslayer (750738) <david@isisltd.com> on Friday March 25 2005, @11:34PM (#12052274)

    Just a little background info first. I was stationed as Naval Air Station Meridian as the air wing's network administrator for 3-1/2 yrs starting in 2001. (I was also an instructor for the jet program.) So, my comments are from direct, personal experience.

    Things have probably changed in the last year since I left, I'm sure, but a little perspective might be in order.

    While I was there, I did software development for personal interest, fun, and the thrill of making something that would help everyone. No glory, no money, just because I enjoyed it. I also did some development for some Coalition projects for multinational forces, basically because they needed it and no one else had anything that was even close to being finished ("close" meaning a beta version in less than a year.) I've used a lot of different OSS, but my own personal favorites were Java or Java+Tomcat. (Go ahead and email me directly if you want to criticise those choices; I can take it.)

    During my tenure, internal software development was on the run. The NMCI project (Google for "EDS" and "NMCI" and you'll find out plenty) worked to specifically kill any applications that weren't "approved." There were legitimate reasons for this, but the end result was that practically only MS and MS-compatible products were allowed...bad news for anyone who wanted to write software.

    One of the reasons I left (amongst many, none bitter) was that I enjoyed working with software but knew that I would have absolutely no future in it if I stayed in. Glad to find out I was wrong.

    It's a very small step, but to have it officially announced that OSS is being used for a project shows that someone, somewhere, is paying attention to the (God forgive me for using this term...personally, I hate it) changes in "paradigms" about how software is developed, used, and implemented.

    I like to program; I know dozens of other military guys/gals who also like it. It's good to see that they may have a future that allows them to do some good and enjoy it.

  • The navy and OSS (Score:5, Informative)

    by jd (1658) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [kapimi]> on Friday March 25 2005, @11:46PM (#12052312) Homepage Journal
    The Navy Research Labs (NRL) produced both BSD and Linux IPSec implementations for a while, along with one-time password versions of things like login, telnet and ftp. (The latter project was called 'opie'.)


    Since then, I've discovered that they've been involved in multicasting, network testing suites and a whole bunch of other stuff. They've a site based on the Sourceforge software for developing such projects, called ProteanForge [navy.mil].


    So far, so good. They're obviously into Open Source in a big way. Despite the fears of some posters, this has not caused the end of the world. Yet, anyway.


    Two drawbacks, though. They may be good coders - and they are! - but they are LOUSY at keeping projects going and even worse at posting news items. The last news posting is dated November 14, 2003. Ok, sure, they might have decided to put their efforts elsewhere. That happens. So why not hand the code over to someone else? The stuff isn't classified, it's Open Source, why not keep the good stuff alive?


    Make that three things. They're lousy at letting anyone know they ARE doing Open Source work. I happen to keep a close eye on groups I know are involved in Open Source, but I only found out about the newer projects relatively recently and I'm damn sure that most people don't know about them at all.


    (Well, up until this post on Slashdot, anyway.)


    True, nothing is "owed", but this isn't about owing. This is about establishing yourself as a credible source, thereby not only increasing the interest of coders who might be of value, but also enhancing the testing of these products, and finally establishing a rapport with a sector of the IT industry that has become wary of Government involvement.


    It wasn't so long ago that IBM was the "Evil IT Baron". These days, their relationship has mellowed, their older product lines have a new lease of life, their reputation has recovered and they've even made some impressive strides into the extreme high-performance computing world.


    This is where the US Navy could have been, seven or eight years ago. They were already releasing Open Source products then, and may well have been years earlier. Instead, their Open Source products are shrouded in secrecy, even though they're plastered over the Internet and GPLed/BSDed to boot! Instead of learning from their own experiences, they are pulling away.


    Yes, I find that annoying. There are some damn good projects out there, that they're letting rot for no reason at all. (Like I said, even if they didn't want to maintain them, they could always hand them to someone else. As IBM did recently, for example.)


    It's good that the Navy is now starting to back Open Source R&D, but I will only believe that they understand what that means when I see some real understanding from them over what they already have.

  • Oh lovely...... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darth_brooks (180756) <chico@wccn[ ]org ['et.' in gap]> on Friday March 25 2005, @11:51PM (#12052326) Homepage
    Sit down and read "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich. he details trying to deal with the Navy on a couple aircraft design projects while heaidng the skunk works at lockheed, and his work on the stealth ship program. The Navy will overburden you with silly, expensive, useless crap. (The stealth ship, for example, had to have a paint locker built in. A ship that would never, ever be painted again. But all navy ships had one, so by God the stealth ship needed one too...)

    Bottom line (from the book anyway): the Navy is an insular community of officious, small minded, power hungry folks who value a project on two things: How many men will I command, and how much does it cost? Bigger, high budget projects obviously mean better projects.

    Doing things cheaper, better, faster, and more efficiently doesn't seem to be the Navy way. I'd like to be wrong, but i seriously doubt I will be. The Navy was born to use NT 4.0.

  • Real Products in the Fleet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by airider (728197) on Saturday March 26 2005, @12:10AM (#12052394)
    Work in the research and development area of the military and can tell you that OSS is prevelant everywhere. If you look at the venders the military is asking to build it's products you will see if you can dig deep enough linux kernals in many of the systems. Primary reason...they can use COTS hardware, a license free kernal, and then just build a proprietary app on top and viola, a robust and reliable product that's easy to write to software-wise (using C and other well documented standards), and allows a fairly good profit margin from the start if they win the contract. Unix is dying or just about dead for the license reason. Don't get me started on NMCI. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE in the military hates it (totally inflexible to the ever changing needs we have). EDS is being investigated by the FTC, and if the military is lucky, won't get their NMCI contract renewed in 2007. Microsoft will remain the desktop of choice as long as DoD continues to bankroll DELL into continued high profits. This will also keep INTEL in the black as well due to DELLs inability to see the value in AMD and other processors. It's become too easy for our purchase agents to just hit the MS/DELL/INTEL "buy" button. Until this changes, we'll be stuck with their stuff whether we like it our not.

  • Already in use? (Score:4, Informative)

    by snStarter (212765) on Saturday March 26 2005, @12:17AM (#12052417)
    I think the the photonics masts for the VIRGINIA that replace periscopes run Red Hat Linux on Apple server hardware. At least the prototype software I saw seemed to indicate this.
  • The Navy uses alot of open source, check out Protean Forge [navy.mil], the Naval Research Lab's sourceforge server...

    • Re:Uhh, so? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by sPaKr (116314)
      always open source? This is not the case as Iv seen many crypto chips which are asics that started as software implentations. These are not Open, the interfaces to the chips arnt even open.. but motorolla does sell phones with the chips in them.. course they dont sell them to us.. the sales of the hardware arnt even open. Its true that the .gov has funded open source, but not all .gov is open source.. not even close.
        • Does the program source become classified or does the data the program operates on become classified. If its the latter then you could even gpl and release the code. Having worked on classified data sets I can say they tend to hold that much closer then programs chomping on them. DOD was more then happy to watch people publish the code, but the images (data sets) the code worked on were held tightly.
          • I can definitely confirm the data/code classification split. I've worked both sides of the fence in my career. My current company ( Yumetech [yumetech.com]) does almost all OSS software development. One of our primary customers is the US Navy - both the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. It's been an explicit requirement of theirs for quite a number of years now that they release as much code as possible under an open source license (typically LGPL or BSD-style). You'll find quite a number of
    • By asserting that, are you not giving away your own bias?
    • Because M$ could pay the difference.
    • The important reason why the entire government should use open source is that it's taxpayer money that they're using, so it should provide as much benefit to the taxpayers as possible.

      Granted, sometimes this isn't possible (e.g. national security), but it ought to be factored into the cost/benefit analysis.
      • I agree, and not only that: but as institutions that live on public money, they should promote public research - and OSS is a form of public research in my opinion. It promotes a healthy behavior of the citizens: sharing knowledge, learning, creating, making, and not just for personal money but for the benefit of knowledge itself: the exact point of academia and public research. Therefore, beyond mere cost analysis, OSS *should* be promoted by every public institution. Besides, mixing private and public int
    • "Most cost analysis studies show that Linux is cheaper in the long run not to mention more secure."

      Have you looked at Red Hat pricing lately?
      • Sure, RH and SuSE (corporate) pricing is up there. On the other hand, you don't HAVE to pay that much for a Linux solution, as there are a number of well respected distributions available, some specifically designed for the corporate market, for the very reason of being disenchanted with RH and SuSE pricing. It may be a bit more work to look into these than "go with the norm", but that decision depends on your priorities, just like the decision to consider Linux, instead of just going with MS out of blind
      • So what? Red Hat isn't the be-all and end-all of Linux. There are other distros out there. I've put together a number of servers, not one of them running Red Hat. I have no intention of installing REd Hat now or at any time in the future.
    • Yeah, it would be nice if this research filtered into the Navy's IT-21 and NMCI initiatives. I can't say I really consider Windows 2000 to be "21st century technology." The only problem I see is that we're about ninety years short of the Navy starting work on an IT-22 project.

    • Re:NMCI ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quarkscat (697644) on Saturday March 26 2005, @04:58AM (#12053216)
      EDS?

      Not EDS, the contractor that trashed 60,000 MSFT
      computers at Britain's Health Services earlier
      this year?

      Not EDS, the contractor that is nearly 2 years
      behind schedule in the deployment of new MSFT
      servers and desktops to the US Marine Corps?

      I cannot help but wonder if these problems are
      what has led up to this OSS initiative. Glad
      to see that the US military is not quite as
      pig-headed as the DHS (Dept. of Homeland Security)
      who have spent/committed over $6 Billion USD
      (multi-year contract) for MSFT's products as the
      basis for their unified IT infrastructure.

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