US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

[+] tantalor|14 years ago|reply

  The US government can directly combine GPL and 
  proprietary/classified software into a single program 
  arbitrarily, as long as the result is never conveyed 
  outside the U.S. government

Just to be clear, this is true for any organization using GPL materials, correct?

[+] pmorici|14 years ago|reply

Yes, though, as I understand it in this case the government is the user and the developer where as a lot of large companies avoid sharing changes by offering their software as a web service (ie: they don't have to distribute the binary) something which I believe changes to the GPL in v3 were supposed to address.

[+] unknown|14 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] niels_olson|14 years ago|reply

Now if only I could get Linux on my Navy desktop, instead of winXP under NMCI. I have all but fired my issued desktop and do as much as possible on my iPad and MacBook.

[+] michaelcampbell|13 years ago|reply

Is virtualbox (or some other VM) not an option for you?

[+] jen_h|14 years ago|reply

First of all, how in the world are they "buying" Linux from Raytheon? They're apparently buying 28M of "services" from Raytheon, not "Linux."

Second of all, what's up with all the stuff that one would think should be classified info showing up all over the media lately?

[+] PKop|14 years ago|reply

Political cheer-leading in an election year.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/08/obama-im-offended-that...

[+] cldrope|14 years ago|reply

Linkbait.

[+] koala_advert|14 years ago|reply

Guess they went with Redhat then?

[+] mtgx|14 years ago|reply

They were controlling drones...with Windows XP? Oh my. Don't tell me they were logging through IE6, too.

[+] petercooper|14 years ago|reply

Had some fun on a Virgin Atlantic flight the other day. Entertainment system wasn't working and got to watch an attendant rebooting into Windows 98 over and over.. turns out the reason it takes 30+ minutes for the system to "reboot" is because ScanDisk is forced to run on every boot.

[+] unknown|14 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] ktizo|14 years ago|reply

Military procurement methods plus a culture of contract outsourcing do produce some amusing outcomes sometimes.

[+] voodoochilo|14 years ago|reply

asked rms few months ago if it wouldn't make sense to change the gpl in the direction of "no military use allowed". he replied that would destroy the "free software philosophy". i disagree. hate the idea that human beings are killed with the help of gnu/linux and/or free software.

[+] why-el|14 years ago|reply

I have to agree with rms here. No X allowed is inherently anti-free software. In cases like this one has to think long term, as in how freer software can lead to freer societies, i.e. societies that escape government coercion. That itself I think will lead to a significant decrease in military activity because free uncoerced citizens can stop their governments from engaging in such self-destructive acts.

[+] espeed|14 years ago|reply

Douglas Crockford's JSLInt and JSON license include the clause:

  The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.

http://www.json.org/license.html

And JSLint was not used in Red Hat because of this (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=455507) or Pylons (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pylons-devel/rggWC8JVeAM/rQ6...).

[+] jen_h|14 years ago|reply

They are also protected by it; the sword has a few edges.

[+] metaobject|14 years ago|reply

In this case, at least, these drones only carry recon/surveillance payloads - I believe the article said "non-weaponized" or something to that effect.

[+] SkyMarshal|14 years ago|reply

Linux is a tool that can used, or misused, for any purpose. Attack the use, not the tool.

27 comments