U.S. Army's Future Combat System Will Run Linux 742
jkastner writes "In 2001 Boeing was chosen to be the lead system integrator for the Army's Future Combat System. The bumper sticker description of this project is 'see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively,' and while Boeing's official FCS site doesn't have a lot of technical details, but you can find some good information at Global Security. To quote their page, "FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems" that will include robotic reconnaissance vehicles and sensors; tactical mobile robots; mobile command, control and communications platforms; networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms; and advanced three-dimensional targeting systems operating on land and in the air.' The Phase 2 request for proposals just appeared and the estimated price is $26 billion
through fiscal year 2009. The fact that the Army is spending billions of dollars on a project isn't anything new, but a little known fact is that the OS for FCS will be Linux (FAQ 4 here.)"
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Interesting)
unless Boeing plans on giving us their software (ya right!), we won't benefit at all.
What makes you say that Boeing would write a GPL program for the DOD? Just because a program runs on top of Linux doesn't mean it has to be GPL'd. They will probably use the NSA version of Linux and any bugs they fix in the OS itself would have to be disclosed and that is a good thing because it will make all Linux systems more secure.
Rather, all of the donated work is benefiting a profiting corporation without any form of compensation. This is where the GPL fails IMHO.
It is the BSD license that allows code to be reused in a proprietary program which your employer Miscroft has taken advantage of many times. I'm curious, do you get paid to spread FUD or is this just "donated work"?
Re:money saving technique (Score:1, Interesting)
If Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait and "shifted the balance of power" he would still be America's favorite dictator. I suppose these day's Musharraf gets favorite dictator status, well either that or the Saudis.
In 20 years when we decide we need to invade Pakistan and get rid of their nukes then all the evil stuff will come out, until then he's our buddy much like Hussein was in the 80s.
Besides the first people to gas the Kurds where actually the British. Ahh yes those fun history facts that seem to get overlooked. Ya when the French and British where deciding which way to split up the oil between themselves they decided it would be best to get the Kurds out of the way, so a little gassing here and a little gassing there and the Kurds learned not to mess with their new European masters.
Most of the countries in Africa that can't seem to grow anything in their countries, well guess what, if the colonial powers from Europe hadn't depleted the soil by trying to grow too many cash crops without proper crop rotation for decades maybe the soil would be worth more than a piss. Oh well it's estimate it'll only take 500 years to undue the damage. 500 years isn't too long to starve is it?
Besides they're just Africans who cares.
Wait what's this Europe did something bad? Unpossible! It's all America's fault! Well a lot of it is actually America's fault...but let's pretend it isn't and watch some Reality TV! I'll buy the BigMacs!
Apt quote (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, Clinton never got very far with his plan, but I think it was a good one. I grew up in Zambia and I saw the kids with bloated stomachs and pencil thin arms. Those children were not going to survive but they might have if someone fed them every day.
Maybe instead of raising defence spending by $48 billion we should raise it by only $8 billion and spend the rest on food.
Hemp? (Score:3, Interesting)
Huge industries make and sell manila, sisal, jute, and synthetic fibres. Hemp is a tiny niche product, because it's a lousy fibre.
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:3, Interesting)
A few of other points...
The acquiring agency is generally considered to be the end user. Not the guy in the field who sees it as a fire control or logistics system.
Usually the source code for something like this won't be classified. Its a command and control system so its only useful to someone else when it has live data in it. Think of it as a telephone: its not the phone that's classified, its the conversation that's held using the phone.
The developer, Boeing, will have every incentive to provide patches for commercialy applicable code back to the Linux development community. Otherwise, they have to maintain their own set of patches and independently apply them and test them every time they go to a new release. I'm guessing they WON'T provide the device driver for the Patriot battery though.
One last item, a couple of systems I worked on when I was with said defense contractor were elements of what the Army then called the Army Tactical Command and Control System (ATTCS) which consisted primarily of HP9000/3X0 workstations running the current flavor of HP-UX and communicating over a variety of tactical comm gear. So this isn't really new but looks like just the next evolution of a concept that has been in use by the Army for about 10 years.
Re:Revoke DOD's linux license (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about freedom remember?
A while back someone did suggest a variation on the GPL which would rule out various sorts of immoral use (I think they had dictatorial regimes in mind) but I don't know whether it caught on at all.
Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a word for that. It's "eugenics." It's an ugly word. You might want to think about looking it up, because evidently you've never heard it before.
We can spend $26 billion killing a bunch of people, causing the survivors to despise us even more. Or we can spend $26 billion saving a bunch of people, and helping bring peace to earth.
It must be nice to live in a world where there is no evil, no tyranny, no oppression. Must be nice to live in a world where nobody ever has to fight.
Next time you visit Earth, please be sure to bring some photos or something. I'd like to see what such a place looks like.
Re:Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
$28B over 7 Years? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Land-Warrior gear that the Special Ops use was originally a GD contract. They wrote custom software to work the gear; the program and gear failed misserably. Then, a few small companies in California took Windows CE, a CE PDA, wrote some custom drivers and hardware mods and you have a very useful system that is used today. Although Windows was chosen, the point is to the DOD that COTS works and has been pushed as the right thought for system development up to the highest generals. It is only natural that this time defense integrators choose the RIGHT technology for the job.
I don't know where most posters to this thread are from, but $26B is chump change. With a $350 Billion defense budget a year that is only $4B a year or 1.1% of the annual budget.
The US produces more food than can be eaten. We air drop for FREE billions of tons of food for third world nations.
Furthermore, you all have to realize that the only reason UN demands are NOW being executed and inspectors are NOW back in Iraq is b/c there are 200,000 US Troops with the billion dollar toys effectively saying "you have no choice, you couldn't disarm on your own in the late 90's and we're tired of taking shit, disarm or get distroyed." A fair statement IMHO.
With Nations like N.Korea just trying to cause problems; Mind you a nation that doesn't have a spare volt to power a palm handheld, or food to keep its people alive (YES we are airdropping food to them as well), is building nukes to "shakedown" the asian community??? It is countries such as N.Korea that force the US to build $26 Billion dollar army combat systems to defend the rest of Aisa and Europe (minus the UK-they are pretty damn tough).
[begin Sarcasim_time]
But if you would rather the US to give that $26B in small-bills to third-world nations, OK we'll do it, and at the same time pull our fleet of aircrat carries over to the UK, Spain, Italy (short list of our supportrs) and protect only them from evil dictatorships and let the rest of you all die horrible nuclear and chemical weapon deaths.
[end Sarcasim_time]
All this idological talk about peace is nice but if you are typing on a computer, you should have the intelligence to realzie that the real world doesn't have people that want peace. As cyclic as economic markets are, so cyclic are the ideals of dictators.
In the 1940's you had Hitler, 1960's was the Cold War, and now you have Terrorists and distructive regiemes. I feel much better paying a few hundreds bucks for my health insurance and knowing my government is doing all that is necessary to ensure the future of free (as in beer and freedom) people will carry on.
Re:$28B over 7 Years? (Score:2, Interesting)
Typical damn american! Hitler was around in the 30's as well dont you know, and you blantently forgot to mention the 1st WW as well, which we were fighting our asses of in europe to save 'freedom' as you call it; when in fact, american 'freedom' is really just a bunch of doo-gooders feeling sorry for all the poor little primitive sould in all the other countries of the world...
I speak with experience, i come from northern ireland (i country ravaged with terrorism do far back it becomes common-place to go shppoing and not find the shop due to rubble). American 'peacemakers' just held back our peace process decades by releasing 'freedom makers' (ie terrorists) form jails and guess what... putting them into government. thanks a fuckin bunch america; hope you are dead pleased with yourselves savign us poor primitive types who dont understand freedom.
PS: i realise not americans are like this guy, and most academic types are embarressed by their governments so dont take this as an attack; it just pisses me off when you get louts like this who think they really are helping out the 3rd world and war ravaged peoples... you need to sort out your own country forts before you start being arrogant and obnoxious abroad.
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:3, Interesting)
That's still true today, I'm sure that a major reason that more DoD code doesn't get leaked out to the public is that it's unfriendly, difficult to use (especially on consumer hardware), and plain-old boring.
from a licensing perspective, the end user is the acquiring agency;
That is how many software licenses are written, but it's not how the GPL is written. The GPL doesn't make any specific mention of corporations having special status. Nor does US copyright law give corporations (or agencies, or other kinds of organizations) special rights as a user of copyright (they have a few differences as a holder of copyright, though).
When the government wants software from Microsoft, they can negotiate a Volume License. There is no equivalent to a "Volume GPL", though. The GPL makes no mention of "groups", "companies", or "sites", so each individual person is the same as any other.
So, assuming a government agency recieved a modified GPL program as a deliverable. It'll have the GPL still attached, and each time they distribute it (to one of their military end-users), they'll have to abide by the GPL, or be in violation of copyright law.
That is why, I believe, contractors so far do not use GPLed code as the basis for deliverables- the government wouldn't like abiding by that license once they'd recieved the end product.
That would be like every cash register in a Linux based point of sale system coming with its own set of source CDs.
That's an interesting question, and one I don't see as 100% resolved yet. It comes down to the meaning of "give the binaries to" (because anyone with the binaries can demand the source). Does a person "have" the binaries, if they're embedded in a device whose filesystem he can't access?
Then, what about the related case of a consumer-product (like an MP3 player) having a GPL program embedded in the firmware? Is that end-user entitled to the source code? From watching RMS, it seems he wants the answer to be yes. (Of course, this is a little different from a cash register or battle tank, as the user owns that hardware)