Open Source on NASA territory

F/OSS was always big at NASA Ames.

Govt works are, generally, open to public use. The RSA patent crud was an abberation in this philosophy, but NASA generally followed it.

One of the biggest requirements is one of _auditability_. It is impossible to actually audit closed-source proprietary systems. Not just that no one would do it, but that no one can. F/OSS is "open" not just for use, but because the source code is available it is possible to audit the systems themselves if it becomes necessary to do so.

I worked at Ames from 1992 to 1999, and the scientists and engineers who I met were quite dedicated to the principles of their work, to the ideals that NASA was supposed to embody. (I'll gladly get into the debates, conspiracies, blocking of private access to space, all that political stuff, but not right now)

It's been linked from LXer before, but my bit on the time I spent at Ames is here:

http://anarchic-order.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-net-was-youn...

Bob,

Were you part of the crew at NASA that was buying every Amiga2000 they could get their hands on? I'd love to know what NASA was running on the ones they had.

I was on the networking side, rather than computation. So no, I didn't see them doing it although I did hear rumor of it.

I was fascinated by the 64 processor Connection Machine, the liquid flourinert-cooled Cray 2, the Cyber and other supercomputers in the fluid computation lab. They were obsolete so very quickly, it was scary.

As much as it would be fun to get all conspiracy theory, the truth is that dynamic fluid modeling was the most important thing that Ames did with computers, simulating and determing what was really going on in the wind tunnels.

Amazing stuff. Mostly, I sat in a dark room all night waiting for things to go wrong and making sure they got fixed ASAP.