From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_50,TO_NO_BRKTS_PCNT autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 2 Dec 92 04:35:07 GMT From: noc.near.net!mv!world!srctran@uunet.uu.net (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Self-defeating DoD software reuse policies Message-ID: List-Id: Self-Defeating Reuse Policies The November 22 issue of Defense Electronics has an interview with Ralph Crafts, mainly on the better need to treat software in the DoD, and to get Ada accepted. He cites one incident that reflects stupidity at its highest. --- DE: You've also commented that you are concerned about lack of accessibility to the DoD software repository. Has this improved any in your opinion? CRAFTS: It's worse now than ever. They had a program in the Army known as RAPID that has now been elevated to a DoD-wide reuse activity (DISA). I was contacted by a professor at a major university who wanted to get some existing Ada code to use for teaching Ada software engineering. He called me about who he could contact. I mentioned RAPID. He said they thought of RAPID too, but couldn't sign the agreement. I didn't know what he was talking about. He said you have to sign a nondisclosure statement before they give you access to the repository. This is government-funded software that's not classified. It should be in the public domain. There are statutes in the law that require any government-funded software be made available to the private sector, unless it's classified. I asked him to fax me a copy of the nondisclosure statement. The first item you have to agree to is that the software you get from the library will only be used for government purposes. You are prohibited from reverse engineering it, from copying it or distributing it. It's absurd and ludicrous. How can you promote reuse with that type of behavior? ---------------------------------- Now I haven't paid much attention to RAPID/DISA, since I knew from the outset that their plans were based on very faulty models of the economic costs of the social and management aspects of running a reusable software business. However, even I didn't guess that they would come up with such self-defeating policy, though I kind of suspected it when they decided not to make the software available over the Internet, either anonymous ftp-style, or by using the comp.sources.XXX approach, or using the NETLIB/STATLIB approach on the Internet (which if you are involved with DoD reuse and don't know about is a good sign to quit before you are caught). If what Ralph Crafts has observed is still policy, it reflects either a very socialist, bureaucratic power controlling operation (the DoD has always been uncomfortable with the near anarchy of the Internet, despite its tremendous successes in information exchange and software reuse), or the DoD's attempt to run an operation (DISA) based on a faulty economic model (i.e. don't let people reverse engineer and modify modules, because you have to spend time and money testing and validating endless variations of similar modules, and then figure a way to help someone choose between fifteen versions of a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm in Ada). The DoD has neither the time, expertise or money to deal with a practical software reuse center, and so impose policies that will wreck any chance of the library from being useful to the general public. On top of which, if a software reuse center is such a viable, sustainable economic concept, why does the DoD have to start such a business? Why not leave it to the private sector? After all if the DoD's success with the reuse center is as successful as its attempts to fund development of Ada compiler tool sets (which people seemed to have conveniently forgotten), then the DISA will eventually die, and this time the private sector won't be there to save the situation, becuase everyone knows that Defense contractors don't like to buy third-party reusable software (and I can count the companies out of business that assumed otherwise) because of DoD policies that the DoD refuses to change or examine. Of course, this is related to the Don't Transfer Research Project Agency's inability to produce a directory of all of the software that it has funded. I recently received in the mail from Institute of New Generation Computer Technology (ICOT - their Fifth Generation effort) a catalog of all of the software they developed and are now making available to the public. There are seventy one systems available - expert shells, knowledge representation, robot design, constraint logic programming, theorem proving, natural language analysis and translation, logic simulators, circuit designers and CASE-based reasoning tools. 170 Megabytes of software are available representing millions of lines of code. Their catalog is in Japanese and English, and the software is available over the Internet and by tape. They are very helpful when contacted, and place no restrictions on what you can do with the software. (In fact this reminds me of one DTRPA stupidity story. A few years ago I came across a natural language interface shell to databases funded by DTRPA and developed by Unisys. I called up the contact person at Unisys to get a copy of the code to play with. She informed me that Unisys was allowed to put in a few percent of its own money ( >5% of total project cost), which being proprietary could not be released, which rendered the rest of the code unreusable. She suggested I write letters all over Unisys and DTRPA. Imagine my tax dollars completely locked up because of this oversight. This is not the way to foster software reuse). Why, in twenty years (ten of which in the Reuse Era), has the DoD been unable to do they same thing with all of its software (and much larger budgets), especially when some jerk in Boston has almost been able to it out of his own wallet? The DoD's understanding of the economic, social, aspects of reuse are minimal, and any hopes that Ada will be more successful by the existence of DoD reuse centers is very wishful thinking. Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimization -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian Source Translation & Optimiztion P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178