NASA Goes SourceForge

refactorator writes "We have a lift-off! The NASA Ames Research Center has open sourced Java PathFinder , a JVM that is an explicit state software model checker, all written in Java. For the first time, the complete master development site of a live NASA software engineering project is hosted on SourceForge. Read the official press release for details. The team around John Penix, Willem Visser, and Peter Mehlitz fought long and hard to get the development hosted outside of NASA, to enable true collaborative software development. Now show the government that it works - join the fray. May Java PathFinder boldly go where no NASA program has gone before." (Both Slashdot and SourceForge are part of VA Software.)

Hmmmm

[maxzilla]

The bigger question for me is if the open source software is used and fails then where does the accountability lie? consider the stress that would be required for anything NASA does, and consider the results of even slight errors. now imagine the sort of bugs that crop up in other open source projects... this could be bad.

This has serious potential

[FortKnox]

This app spiders through all routes of an app through the bytecode. Not only will this become a very stable and usable debugging application, but the applications that borrow from this application are endless with possibilities. For NASA to OS an app, this was probably the best choice!

This can change things...

[Sinryc]

This can change things a lot. If the goverment sees open source work, imagine how many more projects(non security of course. Hell will freeze before those will be OS) will be opened up? Also, what about these OS authers? Do you think job offers might ever come to people? Is there a possibility that these Open Source Projects can change the way the Goverment operates?
What happenes if this project fails? Then what? OS will seem to be a failure then, and that would not be a good thing, at all.

All I can say is, this is one hell of a chance for OS.

Re:Hmmmm

[AKAImBatman]

As I understand it, this is just a tool to track down potential errors in the software. It is not mission critical software, but rather a tool to analyze mission critical software. I doubt that NASA is too concerned that someone will mess it up beyond belief. They've probably got a review process in place to ensure that any new features are properly checked before they go into use at NASA.

What I find interesting, is that this move seems to signal that NASA is looking at using Java in mission critical areas. (Not just data analysis as in the Mars rovers.) Could it be that NASA is finally giving up on Ada and embracing the safety, reliability, and simplicity of Java? If so, it would certainly be a huge culteral shift for them.

Hmm... maybe I should go polish my resume...

Re:Hmmmm

[stecoop]

Lets squash this FUD quickly.

The bigger question for me is if the open source software is used and fails then where does the accountability lie?

If I contract you to build me a widget and it fails it is your fault. I am not responsible for your third party errors. You should have tested the software to the contracted standards and I should receive a quality statement signoff from your engineering department. That is of course if you are building a system that requires quality. If you are building a system for yourself then you still have no one to blame for failure other than yourself.

Re:Why isn't more government stuff open source?

[$1uck]

I worked under a programmer as part of a government contract and he said "everything we code is public domain, b/c we work for the govt." There are/were a few different classes of private contractors ones that worked on site and those that didn't. We worked on site and were often introduced as "government" to off-site contractors. But still I would think that the govt. could retain rights(ownership) to the code (and this would seem to support that). It'd be nice if the government open sourced all code it developed that wasn't necessarily "secret."

Is Open Source "Cool" At Last?

[trifish]

Recently, several large corporations, which (apart from other things) develop commercial software, released a number of projects on sourceforge.net. Among them were: Microsoft (3 projects [ostg.com]), Google (4 projects [google.com]), IBM (30 projects [sourceforge.net]), Adobe (1 project [sourceforge.net]). The reasons they gave for such move are often somewhat "foggy". My personal opinion is that it finally became "cool" to have a project on sourceforge.net, which is great of course.

Hmm... This is new.

[Mmm coffee]

I've checked out the license (link [sourceforge.net]), and it for the most part mirrors the GPL, with the addition of a clause which grants patent rights. However, 2.F provides this following gem:

F. In an effort to track usage and maintain accurate records of the
Subject Software, each Recipient, upon receipt of the Subject
Software, is requested to register with Government Agency by visiting
the following website: http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov. Recipient's
name and personal information shall be used for statistical purposes
only. Once a Recipient makes a Modification available, it is requested
that the Recipient inform Government Agency at the web site provided
above how to access the Modification.

Note that I am not doubting that this is indeed Free Software, as it follows the four freedoms [gnu.org]:

1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

From what I can tell, this is definitely a true Free Software license. However, you have to register with an agency of the United States government in order to muck with the code. Some may have a problem with this, be forewarned.

Re:Hmmmm

[twiddlingbits]

NASA never really embraced Ada. A LOT of software at NASA is done in C or special languages. A great deal of Space Station is Ada but it's not 100%. Java in Mission Critical systems is something NASA is thinking about but they move slow. When I was at the IV&V center there was some talk about Java and how NASA didn't really have the skills to evaluate/manage/budget Java development and that was an area for improvement to prepare for the future. IF there ever is a MissionToMars I'd expect a great deal of Java code. I've not looked in depth for Java for hard real-time systems is not something that is commonly done. I see a few tools out there that are first generation so someone is thinking about it but I have no feedback on how good it is compared to C code.

Re:Not First App OS

[twiddlingbits]

Years ago (1980s) NASA used to have a repository called COSMIC that contained lots of code. It was mostly FORTRAN code for mathematical modeling or simulation of things like aerodyamics or heat transfer or stresses. A lot of it came from the Apollo program and some from Shuttle. When I did simulations for DOD systems we'd look there for code to reuse before we did our own as we felt if NASA was using it then it was verified and pretty tight in execution time.

Re:Hmmmm

[eno2001]

Not meaning to troll, but I have yet to see a decent, stable, well performing Java application. I've worked with quite a few both at home and at work, and they tend to be resource hogs no matter what platform you are on. The Cisco management GUIs that are Java based perform pretty poorly regardless of is I am on Windows or Unix. They're also unstable as hell unless you have the EXACT version of the JVM required for it to run properly. More often than not, that means some other Java managment app isn't going to work.

On the HP side, I use the HP Commandview SDM GUI on HP-UX to manage our drive array. Again, this is a Java app with some of the strangest confilcts with the X window system I've seen outside of one especailly bad Java based GUI. The worst of the lot is SunOne's Java LDAP manager. There is a pane on the left hand side of the app that provides a tree view of the objects in LDAP. If I click on the plus to expand the list of objects, I have to wait a good 5-8 minutes before the screen finally redraws. According to Sun, this is just an issue of running the Java app over the network using X. But that's the only way I can run it because the Sun box doesn't have a video card in it. It's meant to run headless.

At home, I used Limewire for a while until I saw just how much RAM and CPU the 'java' process was consuming on my RedHat 8 box. After that I moved to Overnet (which I still like to call eDonkey) and being a native app, it ran much better.

I still don't get why a lot of people are really into Java. But then again, I don't code in it, I just have used a wide assortment of Java apps.

Re:Hmm... This is new.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL requires that you annotate your changes. If you don't, woe unto you. And if your software isn't GPL'd and you don't annotate changes - woe unto you anyway.

This NASA license only talks about notices appearing in the software (for example at the top of source files, perhaps in the About box) but doesn't mention advertising.

What was obnoxious about the BSD license was that if you said "Our Foomatix BazQux uses FreeBSD" you were legally supposed to add a huge list of universities, companies and government organisations who wanted their names mentioned. It worked out OK when only the Regents of Berkeley wanted to be listed - that's just one line of text, but of course everyone copied the license and changed the name at the top...