Brandon Philips - http://ifup.org

Recently I recieved an email from Jay Lyman of NewsForge.net who wanted my input on an article he is working on:

I heard you talk a little about your work developing software at NASA when I got a tour of the OSU Open Source Lab earlier this year. As I recall, you mentioned that some of your work had the potential to end up in weapons systems, and a discussion of the matter then followed. I’m working on an article now on the appropriateness of open source for weapons, military and national defense and would like to include your input.

This is a very creative and timely topic given our current political climate and I was happy to help by answering the questions that followed.

Do you believe that military, weapons or defense applications are contrary to the ideals of the open source software community? Please explain.

Freedom is the number one ideal of open source and I believe it would be contrary to these ideals to restrict what the software is being used for. The FOSS community is providing a general purpose foundation for a computing system that requires a great amount of customization for a military application and because of the dedication to the ideals of freedom I think it is a valid however possibly unfortunate use of the software.

As a developer, are you concerned about the use of your creations and development for military/defense purposes?

The project I worked on this summer while in the NASA Goddard Robotics Internship Program was general purpose hand recognition software that had as much application on a Mars rover and physical rehabilitation as it does on a military platform.

This is the only software that I have ever developed that has any military applications.

Although I am concerned that the software could be used in a weapon I am hopeful that more productive application may be found. And by using a FOSS license a developer may be inspired by this software and create an entirely new application.

Do you believe open source is appropriate for these types of applications and national defense?

Ensuring that FOSS is protected by licenses that offer liberal and wide freedom to everyone is key. It would be dangerous to start trying to put any restrictions on how FOSS is used as many good things can come out partnership with governments such as the NSAs SELinux.

Furthermore creating additional barriers of use may confuse consumers and scare off vendors from distributing FOSS.

For example would using Linux on desktops in the Senate be considered defense use? Senate does handle defense funding and decide on military actions.

From your perspective, how significant is open source software in this area?

The group that I worked used Linux for prototypes. However this is primarily R&D and proof of concept work. Deployed military applications more than likely are then converted to a specialized CPU like an FPGA.

I think FOSS is used for rapidly prototyping and feeling out a concept but deployed hardware is futher ruggedized and made more compact and manufacturable by special hardware.

Anything else you would like to add?

Freedom is a central value of the community and I think restricting that freedom to protect from unwanted users, such as the military, would be subverting this value.

The next day after emailing my response I started reading The Debian System and read the following passage:

The additional ability to use Debian for whatever purpose a user thinks fit is equally important. Debian does not allow any discrimination of persons, groups, or fields of endeavour. Debian may be put to use by anyone for anything, even in morally debateable domains, such as genetic research and warfare. Debian does not attempt to define what is acceptable and what is not because it would put a limit on the freedom of its users

So it seems that the community has already given some thought to this topic; however I am still anxious to see what Jay has found from the research of his article.

Note: Tux logo borrowed from Phlak linux, a modular live security Linux distribution, see http://phlak.org

I’m Back

Although serious injuries almost resulted from the obvious ending to this situation it was alot of fun at the time.

NASA

The last 5 weeks at NASA were fantastic; everyone came together and finished not only their team projects but also the group project.

In those last weeks I finished up the hand tracking software although I never got the chance to integrate it in to Archie, there just wasn’t enough time. But I did manage to make a neat demo of the software in action:

In amongst finishing up Archie I was elected the President of the NASA Robotics Internship Program Alumni Association. My first order of business as President is organizing the “reunion trip” to Vegas to see the DARPA Grand Challenge. When we visited CMU Red Wittacker assured us that the Red Team Racing team was going to win the challenge this year; we will see first hand.

In the future I will be working with the Treasurer Daniel Calvo to establish the Alumni association as a incorporated non-profit guaranteeing not only our positions as dictators for life but also giving us an opportunity to figure out how to do it. The only difference between a non-profit and for profit organization is one isn’t allowed to make money; pretty obvious huh?

New Town Pennsylvania
After graduation Kim and I took Amtrak up to New Jersey to eventually meet Kim’s Uncle, Aunt and Cousins at their home in New Town PN.

I couldn’t think of a better way to end my crazy 10 weeks on the east coast then sitting out by the pool and talking to Freddie and the family. If any of them are reading; thanks for the conversation and hospitality.

Reading
Since my last post I finished Robot Visions a collection of Asimov’s short stories; this book was a great collection and the introduction had some interesting insight from Asimov about the Three Laws of Robotics; the most famous words he ever wrote.

Given my next few weeks off I have started to tackle the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming which promises to be a good warm for school. On Intelligence; which was recommended to me by Freddie and it is a book that offers one of the first theories on how the brain creates what we call intelligence.

In the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to watch releases of both Mozilla (1.0.3) and the Linux Kernel (2.6.11.8 aka Woozy Beaver). These are two of the largest open source projects in existence today and watching the release, build, bug tracking, and communication systems used by these projects was an eye opening experience. Why was it so interesting? Because these projects have strinkingly different ways to develop software.

Bug Tracking
Bugzilla is used pretty much exclusively by Mozilla to track issues, patches and the versions of software that they effect. Chase Phillips of Mozilla seemed very happy and comfortable working with the interface and understanding how and what all of the flags meant. It is a system that seems to work very well for the Mozilla crew.

Alternatively Greg KH said that the bugzilla.kernel.org rarely gets the attention that it needs and ofter goes ignored by kernel developers; although Andrew Morton does notify the proper subsystem maintainer if a bug has been sitting in the database too long. Instead the LKML is used as the primary place for tracking bugs and patches.

The kernel seems to have alot more “buy in” from its community of developers than Firefox does. And from my limited experience in working with open source communities, I think that the use of a mailing list over a BTS could make this difference. When filling a bug report people generally file and forget never having to get involved further. But with a mailing list you post your own problem and in response get to see everyone elses bugs and get introduced to the development process as patches poor into your mail box.

I realize that there are many other differences between the projects but I think that the dynamics of a mailing list are superior in getting people involved in a software project. But it has its draw backs- the LKML is historically a very harsh environment to get introduced to as the existence of Kernel Newbies and Kernel Mentors suggests. Furthermore some people do not feel comfortable working with mailing lists and smaller projects may miss out on bug reports from users if that is there only form of contact.

Source Code Management
Mozilla uses CVS and have some cool tools setup and integrated with it. Chase gave us a brief tour of Tinderbox (see below), LXR and Bonsai. If there is something that you want to know about the sourcecode these services would be a real help.

The Kernel deals in patches sent through email in particular Greg showed off some cool scripts that allow mbox files containing patches to be automatically parsed applying the patch after a dry-run and adding the patch writers information to the commits and changelog. It all seemed to be a very regulated and standardized process that was inspiriing to watch.

Recently the kernel developers have been working on git and from Gregs recommendation I have been following its development and all I can say is WOW the system is already usable after a month of work and it is looks to be one of those software products that is so practical, simple and pragmatic that in a few years it will become the standard. At the very least I have been having fun reading the source and watching it being developed.

Automated Builds
Mozilla’s Tinderbox system was impressive. The system was polished and well used by the developers. Particularly the integration with CVS and the ability to comment on who was taking charge and fixing the issue was neat.

The Kernel doesn’t have such a system although I have emailed the IA64 team which runs this service and I have been following the git mailing lists and playing with cogito. Maybe I will write one before someone points me to one that exists already :-).

Thanks Guys

Greg KH PCI, USB, I2C, Driver Core and 2.6.x.y maintainer.

Chase Phillips - release engineer for Mozilla

Dave Miller - system administrator for Mozilla

Recently I have started playing with a computer vision library. But it is one of those pieces of software that just moves sooo slow because the developers are hard to get ahold of.

In particular I have a terribly trivial patch that makes the library compile under Linux 2.6 and no one has even commented on it on the mailing list or bug tracker. Furthermore the documentation currently has examples that do not compile because of missing libraries and almost twice a day someone is asking how to fix it on the mailing lists.

To make things worse the mailing list is hosted on a closed Yahoo! Groups account and requires logging in to view. Gah!

In any case I am doing my part and I am going to update the documentation and post it on my wiki as soon as possible. If I can’t get the developers attention I see a fork in the future…

What is the recipe to my ideal summer internship?

• 1x Robotics
• 1x Image and Voice Processing/Recognition
• 1x Embedded Linux
• 1x Internet Technologies

Now of course it should be in a really neat location. I have always wanted to live on the east coast and visit the MIT AI lab and the NASA centers; so lets put it in Maryland. To finish it off I want to be working for some very talented people and most important of all making a difference in peoples lives.

In January Kim told me about a new NASA robotics internship program, I applied and patiently waited as the date of notification for interns was pushed back several times, settling on April 1st 2005. The 2nd and 3rd came and went with no phone call and I began considering my other options.

At 10:30am today my phone rang, it was from an area code that I didn’t recognize and I almost elected not to answer. I am glad I didn’t make that mistake.

It was Lubna Rana of the Goddard Space Flight Centers Office of University Programs and she had some good news. I got my first choice project for the Robotics Internship Program and I should be in Maryland on June 6th 2005. Wow! It was the last thing I expected today.

The project I will be working on is called “CosmoBot,” a robot used to help educators and therapists give better care to children with special needs. And it will be my job, along with 2-3 other students, to figure out how to integrate image processing, voice recognition and wireless sensors in to the product over a 10 week period.

It is going to be a great summer!

Other Cool Internships
Fellow LUG members Alex and Jeremy are taking off on some cool internships too:

• Alex Polvi - Polvi is going to San Fransico for the summer to work at Mozilla
• Jeremy Orem - Jeremy is going to work at Intel