Open Source Software

[hoganshero]

Does anyone know of any countries that use open source software for day to day work ie linux and gnu public license software? Examples of western/westernized militaries would be the best info but I'd love it if anyone can provide any info at all.
thanx

[Seraphim]

NSA uses linux in some of their computers.

[Mark Sman]

French Ministry of Equipment
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/35108.html

Some German public agencies apparently
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2023127.stm

McDonald's Germany (corporate I know)
http://www.novell.com/news/leadstories/2004/jun7/

University of Munich, Klinikum der Universitat Munchen
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=69901

City of Munich in Germany, City of Bergen in Norway
http://www.cbronline.com/currentnews/a10bfd48d4d5b17980256ed00032d5d5

Paris city administration has announced it is considering replacing its Microsoft systems with public domain software such as Linux, OpenOffice and Mozilla.
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=24610

This is just a short search, maybe I'll pull up more later.

Most real servers run on UNIX anyway. Adminstrator retrain is minimal if neeed at all. Linux and UNIX have some ability to talk. I don't know why every government in the world hasn't switched to Linux.

And by the way if you aren't reading this on Mozilla, you better be reading it on Opera. Using Internet Explorer is like tattoing a bullseye on your butt.

[2RHPZ]

Worries Over Linux Military Projects 'Self-Serving'

By Gene J. Koprowski
LinuxInsider
04/15/04 2:35 PM PT

"All major military systems undergo extensive review and vulnerability analysis," said Dr. Inder Singh, chairman and CEO of LynuxWorks. "This is quite contrary to the current commercial industry practice of 'penetrate and patch' for security, as evidenced by recent virus attacks against Windows-based systems."

Arguments that Linux poses a threat to national security if its use on Pentagon projects continues unchecked are "short-sighted and self-serving," and are merely an attempt to cultivate "uncertainty and doubt" in the marketplace. So said Dr. Inder Singh, chairman and CEO of LynuxWorks, a San Jose-based embedded software developer.

Last week, a national controversy over Linux in the defense marketplace was generated by remarks made at a conference in Washington, D.C. (See Gene J. Koprowski, "Expert Says Linux a 'Threat' to US National Security," LinuxInsider, April 9, 2004.)
The risk to national security posed by Linux is grave, said Dan O'Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software , for now that foreign terrorists know that Linux is being used in advanced U.S. defense applications, these Islamic anarchists will "use fake identities to contribute subversive software that will soon be incorporated into our most advanced defense systems."

Linux Strikes Back

But now Linux devotees are striking back against the critics -- at least rhetorically.

"The rapid proliferation of open-standards software continues to elicit responses from software vendors attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt as they find their business models threatened by the global open-standards movement," said Singh, in remarks sent to journalists this week.
He said some unscrupulous vendors have attempted to thwart Linux through lawsuits and legal actions and, most recently, are fueling the FUD surrounding Linux and the security threat it poses to U.S. defense systems.

Open software standards and interfaces, he added, remain widely misunderstood, and misrepresentative claims by technology companies continue to be the norm, not the exception.
Singh noted that critics are implying the government is not assuring the highest levels of security for Linux software they deploy.

Further, he stated, this criticism is baseless and inaccurate.
Vulnerability Analysis

"All major military systems undergo extensive review and vulnerability analysis," Singh said. "This is quite contrary to the current commercial industry practice of 'penetrate and patch' for security, as evidenced by recent virus attacks against Windows-based systems."
The government and military, he said, are "employing prevention and 'defense in depth' to ensure the highest level of security." In other words, he argued, exploitable flaws are eliminated at each stage of the system design process. "A significant amount of time and money is devoted to make sure this occurs at each step of the software development lifecycle," said Singh.

Furthermore, he claimed, open-standards architectures will be vital to decrease the time and costs required to ensure security in the military design process.
Singh observed that Linux and other open standards today have "significant momentum" in the government and military markets.

For example, he said, the Navy Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE) has mandated that all future software development be open standards-based, stipulating that software that does not meet this requirement will not be accepted.
Moving to Open Standards

"By ensuring that all software is open standards-based, future hardware and software upgrades can be made seamlessly to reduce cost and development time and support future enhancements to new and unique war-fighting capabilities on ships, aircrafts, submarines and other platforms," said Singh.
The military is choosing open-source software to mitigate its risks, according to Bob Morris, vice president of sales and marketing of LynuxWorks. "Leveraging the ever-growing world of open standards software leads to better risk mitigation and supports costs for the long term because military customers can protect their investment and avoid the high cost barriers and time-to-market penalties that changing operating systems normally incur," he said.

Security Through Obscurity
Research by the University of Idaho indicates there is a high correlation between DO-178B, a safety standard for safety-critical airborne systems, and Common Criteria, an international framework for developing a set of security requirements for IT products.

The study reported that DO-178B Level A certified products, the highest level of safety for airborne systems, have significant overlaps with the lower levels of Common Criteria.
Today, no commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) operating system is certified to EAL-7, although Linux products are undergoing such certification, Singh said. EAL-7 represents the highest level of the Common Criteria. Certification to EAL-7 dictates that a software product has been formally verified, designed and tested.

"LynuxWorks is currently developing a Common Criteria level EAL-7 secure separation kernel in concert with the NSA and others for the highest level of security ever achieved," said Singh. "The old paradigm of 'security through obscurity' is out the window. Perception is that you cannot trust software that you did not create yourself."

Linx related to the article:
http://www.lynuxworks.com
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/33448.html
http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/33383.html (!!!)

[2RHPZ]

Well, apparently the Striker linux army vehicle isn't just for
transporting troops, by 2010 its going to be able to drive itself and go
on killing missions without needing even a driver, a scary thought that
all of the work of volunteers will wind up being used to create the
"terminators" of the future, giving untold power to sicko's like the
current admin.

Unfortunately with free software, people are free to use it for heinous
ends. We really need a gnu peace liscense, that would say that basically
the military can't use the software.

On the flipside, though, I would much rather have the killing machine
robots running linux, because one running windows is likely to get a virus
and go crazy and start vaporizing our own troops.

"Well before the end of the century, there will be no people on the
battlefield," said Robert Finkelstein, a professor at the University of
Maryland's School of Management and Technology.

Well, I imagine, no US troops, we'll just send in robots to perform
genocide with linux, a really sick thought, and because they can use
lasers to go in an vaporize the "enemy" there won't be any messy corpses
to be seen, any country that's rich in resouces will see its population
vaporized off the face of the earth so that us corporations can just come
in and sack the resources:


Robots for No Man's Land
Defense Companies Developing the 'Brains' to Remake War

General Dynamics engineers work on different unmanned machinery that will be fitted with new robotics that will hopefully bring in a large military contract. (Ricky Carioti - The Washington Post)

By Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page E01

The education of Stryker, an 18-ton military monster truck, begins in the warehouse lab of General Dynamics in Westminster, Md.

There, Stryker, one of the U.S. Army's newest infantry vehicles, is fitted with a "ladar" scanner, the equivalent of a mounted pair of eyes that see by emitting 400,000 laser and radar beams and snap 120 camera images every second. Its brain -- a 40-pound computer system tucked inside its body -- processes that data, and makes instant judgments on how to act and where to go.

The eight-wheeled Stryker has already seen service in Iraq as an armored troop carrier with human drivers. The idea is to teach Stryker to accomplish a mission on its own, as a robot. By 2010, robotic Strykers and similar contrivances are slated to be in use as all-purpose battlefield vehicles, surveying battlegrounds, sniffing for land mines, or transporting supplies and troops to the front line.

An unmanned Stryker is part of the military's effort to move more machines into battle to save both money and lives. "Well before the end of the century, there will be no people on the battlefield," said Robert Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Management and Technology.

Companies throughout the defense industry, among them United Defense LP of Arlington, Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda and the smaller Gaithersburg-based Robotics Research LLC, are developing robotic systems to fill a variety of military functions. For General Dynamics' robotic systems department, making robot brains -- called autonomous navigation systems -- represents the largest business deal in the unit's 14-year history. In November, it won a $185 million award to develop between 30 and 60 automated-navigation prototypes that can be fitted onto vehicles of different size and function, not just Stryker vehicles.

Creating automated navigation systems for combat vehicles is part of the Future Combat System project to remake warfare. The Army plans to spend $14.78 billion on a new combat system over the next six years, of which autonomous navigation systems is one part, according to Maj. Gary Tallman, public affairs officer for the Army.

Founded in 1990 as F&M Manufacturing, the Westminster plant where Stryker's brain is being developed started out designing small, remote-controlled vehicles. Over time, the 80,000-square-foot facility made robots that sorted mail, read bar codes and packaged pharmaceuticals. General Dynamics purchased F&M, which employs 268 people, for an undisclosed amount of money in 1995.

Using autonomous machines in the military became possible in the mid-1980s, when computer processors became faster. In the 1990s, the development of improved sensor technology allowed machines to pick up more information about their environment. Now, autonomous systems can keep track of their whereabouts using global-positioning satellite links, and talk to comrades and commanders through wireless links that shut off automatically if the signal is in danger of being intercepted.

The first unmanned military vehicles made in the early 1980s by the Defense Department were huge vans the size of UPS delivery trucks, filled with hundreds of pounds of clunky computers that could barely navigate at 5 miles an hour in relatively flat terrain. By comparison, Stryker can navigate through forests and desert environments, or drive on the road at top speeds of 60 miles an hour.

Even with these developments, robots still have a lot to learn.

"Now, we have the basic functioning down, and we're trying to make it smarter at something, or better," said Chip DiBerardino, a senior engineer for General Dynamics who works on programming higher intellect into software.

One recent morning, DiBerardino tested a four-wheeled robot called MDARS (short for Mobile Detection Assessment and Response System), a robotic watchdog that patrols the Westminster lab's snow-covered back yard looking for "intruders." It drives several feet, eyes a parking sign and halts, apparently puzzled, until a human attendant reprograms MDARS to move on.

"Compared to a human, MDARS is really not that smart," DiBerardino says by way of explanation.

Developing a robot is like raising children, researchers say.

Even Stryker's most rudimentary movements require complex calculations that must be "taught" to its brain, using hundreds of thousands of programming codes and mathematical algorithms. When it hits a fork in the road, it selects the gravel route instead of the dirt track. When it finds itself trapped in a cul-de-sac, it backs up to reevaluate alternative paths. In the future, Stryker will learn more tactical behaviors mimicking a human's, like running and hiding in trees or behind hills in the presence of enemies. And if its automated comrades go down, it will learn to request orders to carry out an altered mission.

"We need to work on the nervous system of the robots, so it can really learn on its own by picking up patterns based on its prior experience," said Charles Shoemaker, chief of the Army Research Lab's robotics project office in Aberdeen, Md., which funds robotics research at General Dynamics and at universities and other government agencies.

The Predator unmanned aerial vehicle is the most visible of these efforts to have made it into combat. It debuted in Afghanistan and Iraq, collecting aerial images and sending them back to the home base. But autonomous navigation -- allowing an actual unmanned land vehicle that thinks for itself to rove into battle situations -- is a taller order. It requires maneuvering around obstacles, ditches, signs and traffic, which are harder tasks to teach a machine.

Now that it can see and move, Stryker needs to learn how to perceive more and plan better, said James Albus, a senior fellow and researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, which has helped develop some of the intelligence used in Stryker's brain.

"In a way, we're trying to duplicate the processes in the brain, and the brain's got a lot of little computers."

[Marsuitor]

Just heard all the public administration and schools/universities in our city (Bergen, Norway) is changing to Linux etc. Hope the excess money is put to good use, something i doubt... :roll:

[hoganshero]

Thanx for the replies guys. I know that India is moving to implement a mostly OSS solution however they have not yet gone through with it.
I mean considering open office is free and everyone and their dog needs a lisence for MS office in the CF(Canadian Forces). I think that the money saved could go a long way in a military like the CF.

Does anyone know of any thing in the GPL which would limit the use of such software in a military setting.
The lynux works site was exactly what the doctor ordered by the way


And by the way if you aren't reading this on Mozilla, you better be reading it on Opera. Using Internet Explorer is like tattoing a bullseye on your butt.
PS yes I understand. I've been a mozilla user since 1.1. With the adblock plug-in I have turned off everyone's avatar even:) Not to derail my own thread but what plug-ins are you using for Moz?

[2RHPZ]

Pentagon turns to Linux for high-end battlefield simulations

It's using two new Linux Networx Evolocity cluster supercomputers

News Story by Todd R. Weiss

AUGUST 17, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The U.S. Department of Defense is now relying on two 256-processor Linux Networx Evolocity cluster supercomputers to improve on complex computerized battlefield simulations.

The new machines are part of the Pentagon's continuing technology update program (see story), which is bringing in powerful hardware to help expand the nation's military research and development capabilities.

In an announcement today, Salt Lake City-based Linux Networx Inc. said that each of the clusters was delivered and installed at Defense Department high-performance computing centers in Hawaii and Ohio.

Maj. Kevin Benedict, program manager at the U.S. Air Force Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC) in Hawaii, said the new machines replaced a 3-year-old, 512-processor cluster that wasn't powerful enough to conduct the more complicated military simulations now being done by the agency.

The other 256-processor cluster was installed at the Aeronautical Systems Center Major Shared Resource Center (ASC MSRC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio -- another facility in the department's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

The military simulations can create a battle between U.S. forces and an enemy that involves a combination of about 1 million troops, tanks, vehicles, and weapons such as mortars and ground artillery, ships and aircraft. The new supercomputer allows military personnel to conduct simulations involving far more personnel and weapons than ever before, Benedict said.

David Morton, technical director at the MHPCC, said the Linux clusters were chosen because the Defense Department's procurement program found that they provided the best price/performance ratio for the project.

"This is still bleeding edge, but it will eventually be used for training" military personnel, Morton said. "It's still in the lab, but these same capabilities will move out to support actual war [battles]."

The Department of Defense Joint Forces Command (J9) is using the clusters to simulate combat operations on a worldwide virtual battlefield, according to the agency. Military personnel at J9 and other sites around the country can interact directly with the computers at the MHPCC and ASC MSRC as they participate in large-scale, high-resolution combat simulations that weren't possible with the old hardware.

Each of the Linux Networx clusters delivered to MHPCC and ASC MSRC includes 256 dual Intel Xeon 3.06-GHz processors, disk storage from DataDirect Technologies, Gigabit Ethernet technology, and the Clusterworx and Icebox management tools from Linux Networx.

The clusters are part of a larger contract Linux Networx won with the defense agency earlier this year to deliver a total of six cluster computer systems to HPCMP centers, including a 2,132-processor system Linux Networx is now building for the Army Research Laboratory.

"The fact that the Department of Defense is using Linux clusters in a production environment is a significant step forward for this technology," Jeff Graham, deputy director at the ASC MSRC, said in a statement. "Linux Networx focuses on delivering high-productivity clusters, and we are excited about the current and potential future contributions clusters are making in servicing the HPCMP's customer base."

Link (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0%2C10801%2C95309%2C00.html)

[username]

i herd that Telstra the largest telecomunications company in australia is moving alot of thier severs for their ISP and networking branch over to linux from windows to save money.