US military UAVs migrate to Linux
linuxgizmos.com
linuxgizmos.com
Or maybe not, since the missile is clearly intended to be destroyed upon reaching the target.
EDIT: my recollection was off. They don't strictly bar it from those fields but may require a non-free license.
On the other hand, perhaps we should be breaking organizations out of the DoD umbrella. Do we need domestic public servant driven civil engineering projects to be under the Army? Maybe a Civil Corps of Engineers should be established to take over their non-defense projects (or more realistically, spun off).
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
I'm not sure how de-arming would help the US right now, but I understand that there are a lot who would argue that the US has too many weapons (as opposed to having any at all).
If you made an OS that disallowed military use / 'killing people' you would exclude GPS satellites (used to guide smart bombs etc.). It would disallow military delivered aid (same US Navy ships that deliver aid can also be used to deliver munitions / support a fleet). It would disallow legitimate defense of any country.
How was it? I've heard a lot of really impressive claims; I'd be interested to know whether the hardware lives up to the hype.
1: http://www.json.org/license.html
2: http://dev.hasenj.org/post/3272592502/ibm-and-its-minions
I suppose it never ceases being necessary to reiterate that no technology is either good or evil, and it's not applied science which carries moral weight, but the uses to which people put it.
> that no technology is either good or evil,
Well, thats like your, opinion, man.
Some people believe technology is the root of all evil. Technology is by itself evil. Technology is destroyer of natural world and human societies. It is the driving force of alienation, specialization of labor and slavery.
Since the invention of the wheel, oh so often epitomized as the great beginning of invention and technology, tech has promised more play and less work, instead several thousands year later, we can put wheels in our bodies and yet we work more and play less than ever before.
The more technology in a society the more slavery, work and less play and dance. The more destructive capability.
So, yes, you can have your opinion, man, but technology is evil.
Technology freed us from these burdens.
Well, thats like, your opinion, man.
You ask a non-civilized person to survive in New York for a month, then lets talk again.
You are most hours of your life spending on acquiring food, drink and shelter. Its called work for a reason.
Hunters-gatherer societies spent much less time, hunting to aquire food. An activity that you cant even do today if you dont toil for a few months to save for that activity.
EDIT: btw, downvoting me for having a different opinion? thats nice.
It's tempting, I agree, to romanticize our species' distant past, to imagine that our hunter-gatherer ancestors enjoyed what Christian mythology calls the Garden of Eden, and that, had they but not invented agriculture, with its ties to the land and its back-breaking labor, we would even today still recline in paradisaical idyll. Perhaps that's even true, although I doubt it. But the arrow of time has only one head.
Very good catch, you hacker you.
TI's reasoning is that they don't want to be sued because someone designed, say, a fly-by-wire control system which uses COTS MSP430 parts, and then accidentally built one with a bogus MSP that went toes-up on final and brought a jetliner down short of the runway. It's not that they are averse to their parts being used in life-critical applications; it's that they have specific lines for that purpose, consisting of parts which have undergone much heavier and more stringent testing as compared to the general-purpose lines, and if a designer of life-critical hardware can't be bothered to get in touch with TI and arrange to source parts from one of those lines, then TI's not going to be held responsible for a bad result -- nor should they.
I dare say Apple's reasoning is similar. It's not that they actually expect (e.g.) iTunes to comprise a critical component of a nuclear weapon's operating software, inasmuch as such a device has any; rather, it's that if someone does for some lunatic reason actually build an iTunes module which happens to set off a 1Kt IND when you play the same Lady Gaga track ten times in a row, Apple's not going to be held responsible. Granted, it's a particularly stupid and pointless example of gratuitous lawyerese, but the underlying reasoning is probably very similar to TI's. (Although I do rather doubt that Apple makes a special version of iTunes which is certified for nuclear-weapons use.)
So I'm guessing MRI scanners prefer linux or BSD.
http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is-impossi...
For example, what kind of killing do you mean? Could you sue a doctor for using a medical device containing no-kill-GPL software for losing a patient? What about abortions? We've already put the question of when life starts into the GPL and haven't even started covering military use.
Better to follow the good old adage of engineering and use the right tool for the job. Use copyleft licenses to further software freedom, and use activism to achieve your political goals.
I wonder what this B2VL version of Linux is.
Also, it seems that USA is going full steam ahead with Linux adoption, what with NASA switching to Debian and similar stories. I wonder if it gives credibility to the (conspiracy) theories by some that Linux is systematically being made weaker by government agencies.[1][2]
[1]: https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/julian-assange-de...
[2]: https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/biography-of-a-cy...
If Linux was banned from use in critical systems that might lend credibility to that conspiracy theory, Linux being used in sensitive systems destroys any credibility that theory has.
The main credibility I could see in the general claim is encouraging over-complexity and insecure defaults. These can be worked around yourself and lend a high degree of plausible deniability. But even then, your own kind (fellow government departments) are generally all kinds of incompetent and would fall victim to your traps so I just couldn't see how this would not backfire worse than it ever helped. Counter intel folks would be enraged.
This is the thing which concerns me the most. The simplicity is being deprecated in favor of over-engineering.
> These can be worked around yourself and lend a high degree of plausible deniability.
Exactly. I am still not able to digest that the heartbleed vulnerability was an innocent mistake.
> But even then, your own kind (fellow government departments) are generally all kinds of incompetent and would fall victim to your traps so I just couldn't see how this would not backfire worse than it ever helped. Counter intel folks would be enraged.
This can be easily bypassed using a hardened version of Linux.